The term restoration is commonly applied to the political changes in Japan that returned power to the imperial house in 1868. In that year the boy emperor Mutsuhito—later known by his reign name Meiji, or “Enlightened Rule”—replaced the Tokugawa bakufu, or shogunate, at the political centre of the nation. Although phrased in traditional terms as a restoration of imperial rule, the changes initiated during the Meiji period (1868–1912) constituted a social and political revolution that began in the late Tokugawa period and was not completed until the promulgation of the Meiji constitution in 1889.

The fall of the Tokugawa

The arrival of Americans and Europeans in the 1850s increased domestic tensions. The bakufu, already weakened by an eroding economic base and ossified political structure, now found itself challenged by Western powers intent on opening Japan to trade and foreign intercourse. When the bakufu, despite opposition from the throne in Kyōto, signed the Treaty of Kanagawa (or Perry Convention; 1854) and the Harris Treaty (1858), the shogun’s claim of loyalty to the throne and his role as “subduer of barbarians” came to be questioned. To bolster his position, the shogun elicited support from the daimyo through consultation, only to discover that they were firmly xenophobic and called for the expulsion of Westerners. The growing influence of imperial loyalism, nurtured by years of peace and study, received support even within the shogunal camp from men such as Tokugawa Nariaki, the lord of Mito domain (han). Activists used the slogan “Sonnō jōi” (“Revere the emperor! Expel the barbarians!”) not only to support the throne but also to embarrass the bakufu. Nariaki and his followers sought to involve the Kyōto court directly in shogunal affairs in order to establish a nationwide program of preparedness. In this Nariaki was opposed by the bakufu’s chief councillor (tairō), Ii Naosuke, who tried to steer the nation toward self-strengthening and gradual opening. But Ii’s effort to restore the bakufu was short-lived. In the spring of 1860 he was assassinated by men from Mito and Satsuma. Ii’s death inaugurated years of violence during which activist samurai used their swords against the hated “barbarians” and all who consorted with them. If swords proved of little use against Western guns, they exacted a heavy toll from political enemies.

By the early 1860s the Tokugawa bakufu found itself in a dilemma. On the one hand it had to strengthen the country against foreigners. On the other it knew that providing the economic means for self-defense meant giving up shogunal controls that kept competing lords financially weak. Activist samurai, for their part, tried to push their feudal superiors into more strongly antiforeign positions. At the same time, antiforeign acts provoked stern countermeasures and diplomatic indemnities. Most samurai soon realized that expelling foreigners by force was impossible. Foreign military superiority was demonstrated conclusively with the bombardment of Kagoshima in 1863 and Shimonoseki in 1864. Thereafter, samurai activists used their antiforeign slogans primarily to obstruct and embarrass the bakufu, which retained little room to maneuver. Domestically it was forced to make antiforeign concessions to placate the loyalist camp, while foreigners were assured that it remained committed to “opening the country” and abiding by the treaties. Both sides saw it as prevaricating and ineffectual. After the arrival of the British minister Sir Harry Parkes in 1865, Great Britain, in particular, saw no reason to negotiate further with the bakufu and decided to deal directly with the imperial court in Kyōto.

Samurai in several domains also revealed their dissatisfaction with the bakufu’s management of national affairs. One domain in which the call for more direct action emerged was Chōshū (now part of Yamaguchi prefecture), which fired on foreign shipping in the Shimonoseki Strait in 1863. This led to bombardment of Chōshū’s fortifications by Western ships in 1864 and a shogunal expedition that forced the domain to resubmit to Tokugawa authority. But many of Chōshū’s samurai refused to accept this decision, and a military coup in 1864 brought to power, as the daimyo’s counselors, a group of men who had originally led the radical antiforeign movement. Several of these had secretly traveled to England and were consequently no longer blindly xenophobic. Their aims were national—to overthrow the shogunate and create a new government headed by the emperor. The same men organized militia units that utilized Western training methods and arms and included nonsamurai troops. Chōshū became the centre for discontented samurai from other domains who were impatient with their leaders’ caution. In 1866 Chōshū allied itself with neighbouring Satsuma, fearing a Tokugawa attempt to crush all opponents to create a centralized despotism with French help.

Again shogunal armies were sent to control Chōshū in 1866. The defeat of these troops by Chōshū forces led to further loss of power and prestige. Meanwhile, the death of the shogun Iemochi in 1866 brought to power the last shogun, Yoshinobu, who realized the pressing need for national unity. In 1867 he resigned his powers rather than risk a full-scale military confrontation with Satsuma and Chōshū, doing so in the belief that he would retain an important place in any emerging national administration. But this was not to be. Outmaneuvered by the young Meiji emperor, who succeeded to the throne in 1867, and a few court nobles who maintained close ties with Satsuma and Chōshū, the shogun faced the choice of giving up his lands, which would risk revolt from his vassals, or appearing disobedient, which would justify punitive measures against him. Yoshinobu tried to move troops against Kyōto, only to be defeated. In the wake of this defeat, Satsuma, Chōshū, and Tosa units, now the imperial army, advanced on Edo, which was surrendered without battle. While sporadic fighting continued until the summer of 1869, the Tokugawa cause was doomed. In January 1868 the principal daimyo were summoned to Kyōto to learn of the restoration of imperial rule. Later that year the emperor moved into the Tokugawa castle in Edo, and the city was renamed Tokyo (“Eastern Capital”). With the emperor and his supporters now in control, the building of the modern state began.

From feudal to modern state

The Meiji government was dominated by men from Satsuma, Chōshū, and those of the court who had sided with the emperor. They were convinced that Japan needed a unified national government to achieve military and material equality with the West. Most, like Kido Kōin and Itō Hirobumi of Chōshū and Saigō Takamori and Ōkubo Toshimichi of Satsuma, were young samurai of modest rank, but they did not represent in any sense a class interest. Indeed, their measures destroyed the samurai class. In order to gain backing for their policies, they enlisted the support of leaders from domains with which they had worked—Tosa, Saga, Echizen—and court nobles like Iwakura Tomomi and Sanjō Sanetomi. The cooperation of the impressionable young emperor was essential to these efforts.

It was believed that the West depended on constitutionalism for national unity, on industrialization for material strength, and on a well-trained military for national security. “Fukoku kyōhei” (“Enrich the country, strengthen the military”) became the Meiji slogan. Knowledge was to be sought in the West, the goodwill of which was essential for revising the unequal treaties. In 1871 Iwakura Tomomi led a large number of government officials on a mission to the United States and Europe. Their experiences strengthened convictions already formed on the requisites for modernization.

Abolition of feudalism

The Meiji reformers began with measures that addressed the decentralized feudal structure to which they attributed Japan’s weakness. In 1869 the lords of Satsuma, Chōshū, Tosa, and Saga were persuaded to return their lands to the throne. Others quickly followed suit. The court took steps to standardize the administration of the domains, appointing their former daimyo as governors. In 1871 the governor-daimyo were summoned to Tokyo and told that the domains were officially abolished. The 250 former domains now became 72 prefectures and three metropolitan districts, a number later reduced by one-third. In the process, most daimyo were eased out of administrative roles, and though rewarded with titles in a new European-style peerage in 1884, were effectively removed from political power.

The Meiji leaders also realized that they had to end the complex class system that had existed under feudalism. Yet, it was difficult to deal with the samurai, who numbered, with dependents, almost two million in 1868. Starting in 1869 the old hierarchy was replaced by a simpler division that established three orders: court nobles and former feudal lords became kazoku (“peers”); former samurai, shizoku, and all others (including outcast groups) now became heimin (“commoners”). The samurai were initially given annual pensions, but financial duress forced the conversion of these into lump-sum payments of interest-bearing but nonconvertible bonds in 1876. Other symbolic class distinctions such as the hairstyle of samurai and the privilege of wearing swords were abolished.

Many former samurai lacked commercial experience and squandered their bonds. Inflation also undercut their value. A national conscription system instituted in 1873 further deprived samurai of their monopoly on military service. Samurai discontent resulted in numerous revolts, the most serious occurring in the southwest, where the restoration movement had started and warriors expected the greatest rewards. An uprising in Chōshū expressed dissatisfaction with administrative measures that deprived the samurai of their status and income. In Saga, samurai called for a foreign war to provide employment for their class. The last, and by far the greatest, revolt came in Satsuma in 1877. This rebellion was led by the restoration hero Saigō Takamori and lasted six months. The imperial government’s conscript levies were hard-pressed to defeat Saigō, but in the end superior transport, modern communications, and better weapons assured victory for the government. In this, as in the other revolts, issues were localized, and the loyalties of most Satsuma men in the central government remained with the imperial cause.

Land surveys were begun in 1873 to determine the amount and value of land based on average rice yields in recent years, and a monetary tax of 3 percent of land value was established. The same surveys led to certificates of land ownership for farmers, who were released from feudal controls. The land measures involved basic changes, and there was widespread confusion and uncertainty among farmers that expressed itself in the form of short-lived revolts and demonstrations. But the establishment of private ownership, and measures to promote new technology, fertilizers, and seeds, produced a rise in agricultural output. The land tax, supplemented by printed money, became the principal source of government revenue for several decades.

Although it was hard-pressed for money, the government initiated a program of industrialization, which was seen as essential for national strength. Except for military industries and strategic communications, this program was largely in private hands, although the government set up pilot plants to provide encouragement. Trade and manufacturing benefited from a growing national market and legal security, but the unequal treaties enacted with foreign powers made it impossible to protect industries with tariffs until 1911.

In the 1880s fear of excessive inflation led the government to sell its remaining plants to private investors—usually individuals with close ties to those in power. As a result, a small group of men came to dominate many industries. Collectively they became known as the zaibatsu, or financial cliques. With great opportunities and few competitors, zaibatsu firms came to dominate enterprise after enterprise. Sharing a similar vision for the country, these men maintained close ties to the government leadership. The House of Mitsui, for instance, was on friendly terms with many of the Meiji oligarchs, and that of Mitsubishi was founded by a Tosa samurai who had been an associate of those within the government’s inner circle.

Equally important for building a modern state was the development of national identity. True national unity required the propagation of new loyalties among the general populace and the transformation of powerless and inarticulate peasants into citizens of a centralized state. The use of religion and ideology was vital to this process. Early Meiji policy, therefore, elevated Shintō to the highest position in the new religious hierarchy, replacing Buddhism with a cult of national deities that supported the throne. Christianity was reluctantly legalized in 1873, but, while important for some intellectuals, it was treated with suspicion by many in the government. The challenge remained how to use traditional values without risking foreign condemnation that the government was forcing a state religion upon the Japanese. By the 1890s the education system provided the ideal vehicle to inculcate the new ideological orientation. A system of universal education had been announced in 1872. For a time its organization and philosophy were Western, but during the 1880s a new emphasis on ethics emerged as the government tried to counter excessive Westernization and followed European ideas on nationalist education. In 1890 the Imperial Rescript on Education (Kyōiku Chokugo) laid out the lines of Confucian and Shintō ideology, which constituted the moral content of later Japanese education. Thus, loyalty to the emperor, who was hedged about with Confucian teachings and Shintō reverence, became the centre of a citizen’s ideology. To avoid charges of indoctrination, the state distinguished between this secular cult and actual religion, permitting “religious freedom” while requiring a form of worship as the patriotic duty of all Japanese. The education system also was utilized to project into the citizenry at large the ideal of samurai loyalty that had been the heritage of the ruling class.

Constitutional movement

Many Japanese believed that constitutions provided the unity that gave Western nations their strength. The Meiji leaders therefore sought to transform Japan in this direction. In 1868 the government experimented with a two-chamber house, which proved unworkable. Meanwhile, the emperor’s charter oath of April 1868 committed the government to establishing “deliberative assemblies” and “public discussion,” to a worldwide search for knowledge, to the abrogation of past customs, and to the pursuit by all Japanese of their individual callings.

Echoing the government’s call for greater participation were voices from below. Village leaders, who had benefited from the commercialization of agriculture in the late Tokugawa period, wanted a more participatory system that could reflect their emerging bourgeois interests. Former samurai realized that a parliamentary system might allow them to recoup their lost positions. Samurai interest was sparked by a split in the government’s inner circle over a proposed Korean invasion in 1873. At odds with Iwakura and Ōkubo, who insisted on domestic reform over risky foreign ventures, Itagaki Taisuke and several fellow samurai from Tosa and Saga left the government in protest, calling for a popularly elected assembly so that future decisions might reflect the will of the people—by which they largely meant the former samurai. Starting with self-help samurai organizations, Itagaki expanded his movement for “freedom and popular rights” to include other groups. In 1881 he organized the Liberal Party (Jiyūtō), whose members were largely wealthy farmers. In 1880 nearly 250,000 signatures were gathered on petitions demanding a national assembly.

Under these circumstances, the emperor requested the advice of his ministers on constitutional matters. Ōkuma Shigenobu, a leader from Saga, submitted a relatively liberal constitutional draft in 1881, which he published without official approval. He also revealed sensational evidence of corruption in the disposal of government assets in Hokkaido. For this he was forced out of the government’s inner circle. Ōkuma organized the Progressive Party (Kaishintō) in 1882 to further his British-based constitutional ideals, which attracted considerable support among urban business and journalistic communities.

The clamour of 1881 resulted in an imperial promise of a constitution by 1889. Meanwhile, the parties were encouraged to await its promulgation quietly. The constitution was drafted behind the scenes by a commission headed by Itō Hirobumi and aided by the German constitutional scholar Hermann Roesler. The period of its drafting coincided with an era of great economic distress in the countryside. This provided an environment in which party agitation could easily kindle direct action and violence, and several incidents of this type led to severe government reprisals and increased police controls and press restrictions. Village leaders, confronted by unruly members of their community whose land faced imminent foreclosure, became less inclined to support liberal ideas. Consequently, the parties decided to dissolve temporarily in 1884. In the interim Itagaki traveled to Europe and returned convinced more than ever of the need for national unity in the face of Western condescension.

Itō also traveled to Europe as part of the work to prepare the new constitution. In Germany he found an appropriate balance of imperial power and constitutional forms that seemed to offer modernity without sacrificing effective control. To balance a popularly elected lower house, Itō established a new European-style peerage in 1884. Government leaders, military commanders, and former daimyo were given titles and readied for future seats in a house of peers. A cabinet system, in which ministers were directly appointed by the emperor, was installed in 1885, and a Privy Council, designed to judge and safeguard the constitution, was set up in 1888. Itō became head of the council.

The constitution was formally promulgated in 1889, and elections for the lower house were held to prepare for the initial Diet (Kokkai), which met in 1890. The constitution took the form of a gracious gift from the sovereign to his people, and it could be amended only upon imperial initiative. Its provisions were couched in general terms. Rights and liberties were granted “except as regulated by law.” If the Diet refused to approve a budget, the one from the previous year could be followed. The emperor was “sacred and inviolable”; he commanded the armies, made war and peace, and dissolved the lower house at will. Effective power thus lay with the executive, which could claim to represent the imperial will. The rescript on education guaranteed that future generations would accept imperial authority without question.

Despite its antidemocratic features, the constitution provided a much greater arena for dissent and debate than had previously existed. The lower house could initiate legislation. Private property was inviolate, and freedoms, though subject to legislation, were greater than before. Even military budgets required Diet approval for increases. Initially, a tax qualification of 15 yen limited the electorate to about 500,000; this was lowered in 1900 and 1920, and in 1925 universal manhood suffrage came into effect. The government leaders found it harder to control the lower house than initially anticipated, and party leaders found it advantageous, at times, to cooperate with the oligarchs. The constitution thus basically redefined politics for both sides. It also ended the revolutionary phase of the Meiji Restoration. With the new institutions in place, the oligarchs withdrew from power and were content to maintain and conserve the ideological and political institutions they had created through their roles as elder statesmen (genrō).

The emergence of imperial Japan

Foreign affairs

Achieving equality with the West was one of the primary goals of the Meiji leaders. Treaty reform, designed to end the foreigners’ judicial and economic privileges provided by extraterritoriality and fixed customs duties was sought as early as 1871 when the Iwakura mission went to the United States and Europe. The Western powers insisted, however, that they could not revise the treaties until Japanese legal institutions were reformed along European and American lines. Efforts to reach a compromise settlement in the 1880s were rejected by the press and opposition groups in Japan. It was not until 1894, therefore, that treaty provisions for extraterritoriality were formally changed.

During the first half of the Meiji period, Asian relations were seen as less important than domestic development. In 1874 a punitive expedition was launched against Formosa (Taiwan) to chastise the aborigines for murdering Ryukyuan fishermen. This lent support to Japanese claims to the Ryukyu Islands, which had been under Satsuma influence in Tokugawa times. Despite Chinese protests, the Ryukyus were incorporated into Japan in 1879. Meanwhile, calls for an aggressive foreign policy in Korea, aired by Japanese nationalists and some liberals, were steadily rejected by the Meiji leaders. At the same time, China became increasingly concerned about expanding Japanese influence in Korea, which China still viewed as a tributary state. Incidents on the peninsula in 1882 and 1884 that might have involved China and Japan in war were settled by compromise, and in 1885 China and Japan agreed that neither would send troops to Korea without first informing the other.

The Sino-Japanese War

By the early 1890s Chinese influence in Korea had increased. In 1894 Korea requested Chinese assistance in putting down a local rebellion. When the Chinese notified Tokyo of this, Japan quickly rushed troops to Korea. With the rebellion crushed, neither side withdrew. The Sino-Japanese War formally erupted in July 1894. Japanese forces proved to be superior on both land and sea, and, with the loss of its northern fleet, China sued for peace. The peace treaty negotiated at Shimonoseki was formally signed on April 17, 1895; both sides recognized the independence of Korea, and China ceded to Japan Formosa, the Pescadores Islands, and the Liaotung Peninsula, granted Japan all rights enjoyed by European powers, and made significant economic concessions, including the opening of new treaty ports and a large indemnity in gold. A commercial treaty giving Japan special tax exemptions and other trade and manufacturing privileges was signed in 1896. Japan thus marked its own emancipation from the unequal treaties by imposing even harsher terms on its neighbour. Meanwhile, France, Russia, and Germany were not willing to endorse Japanese gains and forced the return of the Liaotung Peninsula to China. Insult was added to injury when Russia leased the same territory with its important naval base, Port Arthur (now Lü-shun), from China in 1898. The war thus demonstrated that the Japanese could not maintain Asian military victories without Western sufferance. At the same time, it proved a tremendous source of prestige for Japan and brought the government much internal support; it also strengthened the hand of the military in national affairs.

The Russo-Japanese War

Reluctant to accept Japanese leadership, Korea instead sought Russia’s help. During the Boxer Rebellion (1900) in China, Japanese troops played a major part in the allied expedition to rescue foreign nationals in Beijing, but Russia occupied southern Manchuria, thereby strengthening its links with Korea. Realizing the need for protection against multiple European enemies, the Japanese began talks with England that led to the Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902). In this pact both countries agreed to aid the other in the event of an attack by two or more powers but remain neutral if the other went to war with a single enemy. Backed by Britain, Tokyo was prepared to take a firmer stand against Russian advances in Manchuria and Korea. In 1904 Japanese ships attacked the Russian fleet at Port Arthur without warning. In the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) that followed, Japanese arms were everywhere successful; the most spectacular victory occurred in the Tsushima Strait, where the ships of Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō destroyed the Russian Baltic fleet. But the war was extremely costly in Japanese lives and treasure, and Japan was relieved when U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt offered to mediate a peace settlement. The Treaty of Portsmouth, signed on September 5, 1905, gave Japan primacy in Korea, and Russia granted to Japan its economic and political interests in southern Manchuria, including the Liaotung Peninsula. Russia also ceded to Japan the southern half of the island of Sakhalin. The victory over Russia altered the balance of power in East Asia, and it encouraged nationalist movements in India and the Middle East. But at home Japan’s failure to gain an indemnity to pay for the heavy war costs made the treaty unpopular.

Japanese expansionism

After the conclusion of the war, Japanese leaders gained a free hand in Korea. Korean opposition to Japanese “reforms” was no longer tolerated. Itō Hirobumi, sent to Korea as resident general, forced through treaties that gave Korea little more than protectorate status and ordered the abdication of the Korean king. Itō’s assassination in 1909 led to Korea’s annexation by Japan the following year. Korean liberties and resistance were crushed. By 1912, when the Meiji emperor died, Japan had not only achieved equality with the West but also had become the strongest imperialist power in East Asia.

Japan had abundant opportunity to use its new power in the years that followed. During World War I it fought on the Allied side but limited its activities to seizing German possessions in China and the Pacific. When China sought the return of former German holdings in Shantung province, Japan responded with the so-called Twenty-one Demands, issued in 1915, that tried to pressure China into widespread concessions ranging from extended leases in Manchuria and joint control of China’s coal and iron resources to policy matters regarding harbours and the policing of Chinese cities. While giving in on a number of specific issues, the Chinese resisted the most extreme Japanese demands that would have turned China into a Japanese ward. Despite its economic gains, Japan’s World War I China policy left behind a legacy of ill feeling and distrust, both in China and in the West. The rapaciousness of Japanese demands and China’s chagrin at its failure to recover its losses in the Treaty of Versailles (1919) cost Japan any hope of Chinese friendship. Subsequent Japanese sponsorship of corrupt warlord regimes in Manchuria and North China helped to confirm the anti-Japanese nature of modern Chinese nationalism.

The part played by Japan in the Allied intervention in Siberia following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1918 caused further concerns about Japanese expansion. One of the principal reasons for the disarmament conference held in Washington, D.C., in 1921–22, was to reduce Japanese influence. A network of treaties was designed to place restraints on Japanese ambitions while guaranteeing Japanese security. These treaties included a Four-Power Pact, between Japan, Great Britain, the United States, and France, that replaced the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, and a Five-Power Naval Limitation Treaty (with Italy) that set limits for battleships at a ratio of five for Great Britain and the United States to three for Japan. An agreement on the fortification of Pacific island bases was intended to assure Japan of security in its home waters. Finally a Nine-Power Pact would, it was hoped, protect China from further unilateral demands. Japan subsequently agreed to retire from Shantung, and, shortly thereafter, Japanese armies withdrew from Siberia and northern Sakhalin. In 1925 a treaty with the Soviet Union extended recognition to the U.S.S.R. and ended active hostilities.

Thus, by the mid-1920s Japan’s great surge forward in Asia and the Pacific had ended. This brought hope that a new quality of moderation and reasonableness, based on the absence of irritating reminders of inferiority and weakness, might characterize Japanese policy.

Constitutional government

The inauguration of parliament in 1890 was accompanied by a vigorous and often obstreperous opposition in the lower house, and it was only a general determination to convince Western skeptics that constitutional government could work in Japan that forced party and government leaders to cooperate. The first cabinets, led by Yamagata Aritomo, Matsukata Masayoshi, and Itō, maintained the principle that the government, which represented the emperor, must be aloof from parties and that the lower house should approve government requests. This policy failed because the parties tried to increase their power and patronage and therefore sought cabinets responsible to the Diet. Only the Sino-Japanese War produced the kind of unity the constitution’s makers had envisaged. Thereafter, the oligarchs formed alliances with the two parties, usually exchanging cabinet seats for support in the lower house. These arrangements proved unsatisfactory, however, when party leaders raised their sights. In 1898 Itagaki and Ōkuma combined forces to form a single party, the Constitutional Party (Kenseitō), and were allowed to form a government. But their alliance was brittle as long-standing animosities and jealousies enabled antiparty forces among the bureaucracy and oligarchy to force their resignation within a few months.

A discernible division developed among the dwindling group of Meiji leaders. Yamagata Aritomo dominated the army and much of the bureaucracy. In power for two years after the Kenseitō cabinet, he strengthened legal and institutional safeguards against rule by political parties and secured an imperial ordinance that service ministers should be career officers on active duty; this gave the army and navy power to break cabinets. Meanwhile, Itō Hirobumi endorsed the party trend by forming the Friends of Constitutional Government Party (Rikken Seiyūkai) in 1900, which enlisted most of the former followers of Itagaki’s Jiyūtō. Thereafter, practical political goals of power and patronage softened the hostility between oligarchs and politicians.

After 1901 both Itō and Yamagata retired from active participation in politics, and until 1913 cabinets were led by their protégés Saionji Kimmochi and Katsura Tarō. Basic decisions on politics and policy, however, continued to be made by the elder statesmen, who advised the emperor on all important matters and selected prime ministers by rotating power between the two principal factions. Saionji was the last leader recruited into this extraconstitutional body.

With the death or enfeeblement of the first generation of oligarchs, the pattern of political manipulation changed. No subsequent group could match the prestige of the Meiji leaders. The Meiji emperor died in 1912 and was succeeded by a son who took the reign name Taishō (“Great Righteousness”; reigned 1912–26); but mental illness prevented him from approximating his father’s fame. The growing prestige and power of businessmen found expression in their control of the political parties and resulted in an increasing role for professional party politicians. The genrō’s last attempt to seat Katsura in 1912 ended in failure, while his successor, Admiral Yamamoto Gonnohyōe, was discredited by scandals in naval procurement. Ōkuma Shigenobu emerged from retirement to head a cabinet during World War I and was succeeded by a military cabinet under General Terauchi Masatake. In 1918, however, discontent with Terauchi’s reactionary posture and administrative incompetence combined with the rising power of the party professionals to bring about the appointment of Hara Takashi (Hara Kei) as prime minister. Hara was the first nontitled person to hold that office, and his appointment marked the first party cabinet. His assassination in 1921 cut short his cautious efforts to rein in military and bureaucratic power and extend the franchise. After several short-lived cabinets, a successful party cabinet was organized by Katō Takaaki in 1924. The army was reduced in size, moderate social legislation was enacted, and universal manhood suffrage extended the franchise to some 14 million voters. Meanwhile, Japan avoided stronger involvement in the civil war in China and pursued a conciliatory course with the Soviet Union, despite demands from nationalists, who utilized alleged outrages in China and the discriminatory U.S. Immigration Act of 1924 to warn of the futility of cooperating with Western countries.

But, as the parties grew in power, they tended to look to bureaucrats for leadership. The businessmen who supported the parties and the bureaucrats who led them shared a fear of the social movements that followed industrialization and the importation of foreign ideas. A growing labour movement already had been checked by a special police law introduced in 1900. This was strengthened under Katō in 1925 as conservatives generally began to fear subversion in labour and tenant movements. Their anxieties mounted after the Japan Communist Party (JCP) was organized in 1922, and interest in Marxism expanded in intellectual circles. Under the Meiji constitution, party cabinets had to make peace with the military, the House of Peers, and the conservatives close to the throne. Therefore, they needed to work out their ideas for reform with utmost caution. The Diet often found itself virtually powerless, which led to disorder and corruption that did little to win popular support for representative government. The Meiji constitution was so ambiguous in assigning executive power that without institutional reform the party prime ministers could do little but compromise with forces antagonistic to democratic government.

Social change

Social and intellectual changes taking place in Japan were as important as those in politics. Many were closely related to the growth and development of industry. After the Treaty of Shimonoseki the government used the Chinese indemnity to subsidize the Yawata Iron and Steel Works in northern Kyushu, which came into production in 1901 and greatly expanded Japan’s heavy industrial sector. At the same time, textile and other consumer-goods industries expanded to meet Japanese needs and to earn credits required for the import of raw materials. Heavy industry was encouraged by government-controlled banks, which provided needed capital. Strategic industries, notably steel and the principal rail lines, were in state hands, but most new growth was in the private sector.

By 1900 Japan’s population had expanded to nearly 45 million from a late Tokugawa base of about 30 million. Increasing numbers of Japanese were attracted to urban industrial centres. At the same time, domestic food production was hard-pressed to stay abreast of population increases. Agricultural productivity, after early improvements, slowed and stagnated, and it became necessary to import food.

The enlarged urban population produced movements of social inquiry and protest. In 1895 the industrial labour force numbered about 400,000, the majority of which were women employed in the textile mills. Several efforts to organize socialist movements met with police repression. Peace-preservation laws were passed in 1900 and 1925 to inhibit labour organization, and in 1928 it became a capital crime to agitate against private property or the Japanese “national polity” (kokutai). In 1903 a small group organized the Heimin shimbun (“Commoner’s Newspaper”); it published The Communist Manifesto and opposed the Russo-Japanese War before being forced to cease publication. The socialist movement gained strength after World War I, but its program was often theoretical and doctrinaire, and its leaders found it difficult to make contact with workers. Police repression and the difficulties of organizing a labour movement among large numbers of women workers (who worked under three-year contracts before leaving to get married) and diverse industrial empires such as Mitsui and Mitsubishi also hampered union organizers. Meanwhile, the increasing confidence and power of management came to influence, and at times control, the political parties.

In the countryside the principal reflection of Japan’s growing involvement in the world economy was the increased production of silkworms, which augmented farm income. At the same time, rural Japan provided the bulk of the labourers for the new industries, and daughters from farming families were found in many textile plants. But the early 20th century was not a time of agricultural prosperity. Colonial competition tended to depress domestic agricultural prices. Farmers also were handicapped by growing fragmentation of holdings and increasing tenancy. The rising number of tenants resulted in an expansion of tenant organizations, especially during and after World War I. Government efforts to address the situation resulted in little more than a law in 1924 that called for mediation of landlord-tenant disputes. A financial panic in 1927 aggravated rural conditions and indebtedness, even before the collapse of the American silk market in 1929 spelled disaster for farmers and workers alike. In social terms, the countryside remained poor, traditional, and largely undeveloped.

The most lasting social changes were found in the great metropolitan centres, where a growing labour force and new middle class were concentrated. The Tokyo-Yokohama area was devastated by the great Kantō earthquake of September 1923, and the region’s reconstruction as a modern metropolis symbolized the growth of the urban society. Cultural interests during and after World War I were uniformly international and largely American in inspiration. Western music, dancing, and sports became popular, and rising urban living standards and expectations produced the need for more and better higher education. The participation of women in office work and other new occupations, and the rise of a feminist movement, however unsuccessful, marked the beginning of changes in the family system.

The educated class grew in size and vigour. Currents of thought included Western-style democracy and the new radicalism of the Soviet Union; the Marxist influence went far beyond the ranks of the struggling Communist Party—which, in any event, was soon crushed by the police. Political liberalism was championed by the educator and politician Yoshino Sakuzō, who formed a group of students and intellectuals into the New Peoples Association (Shinjinkai), which represented a self-conscious break with tradition. Minobe Tatsukichi, a distinguished constitutional theorist, introduced the idea that the emperor was an organ of the state and not the sole source of sovereignty. Such men faced sharp criticism and, in time, were forced to resign their positions, but they had great influence, both symbolizing and stimulating the world of advanced ideas.

The base for these new currents, however, was precarious. Politically and institutionally, no advances—beyond the suffrage act of 1925—were made, while the peace-preservation laws of 1928 established a special police corps to ferret out “dangerous thoughts.” The economic well-being of the urban classes depended on the continued expansion of international trade. When the worldwide financial collapse at the end of the decade wrecked Japan’s foreign markets and removed the possibility of villagers augmenting their meagre incomes from rice farming with silk production, and when the venality, irresponsibility, and occasional corruption of Diet representatives was contrasted to the poverty found in many parts of Japan, numerous Japanese were prepared to listen to charges that the political-party government, dominated by selfish zaibatsu interests, had neglected Japan’s markets in China, imperiled morality and decency at home, and allowed subversive trends to flourish, while politicians reaped personal fortunes.

The rise of the militarists

The notion that expansion through military conquest would solve Japan’s economic problems gained currency during the Great Depression of the 1930s. It was argued that the rapid growth of Japan’s population—which stood at close to 65 million in 1930—necessitated large food imports. To sustain such imports, Japan had to be able to export. Western tariffs limited exports, while discriminatory legislation in many countries and anti-Japanese racism served as barriers to emigration. Chinese and Japanese efforts to secure racial equality in the League of Nations covenant had been rejected by Western statesmen. Thus, it was argued, Japan had no recourse but to use force.

The weakening of party government

To these economic and racial arguments was added the military’s distrust of party government. The Washington Conference had allowed a smaller ratio of naval strength than the navy desired, while the government of Prime Minister Hamaguchi Osachi in 1930 had accepted the London Naval Conference’s limits on heavy cruisers over military objections. In 1925 Katō Takaaki had cut the army by four divisions. Many military men objected to the restraint shown by Japan toward the Chinese Nationalists’ northern expedition of 1926 and 1927 and wanted Japan to take a harder line in China. Under Prime Minister Tanaka Giichi the Seiyūkai cabinet reversed earlier policy by intervening in Shantung in 1927 and 1928. But Tanaka was replaced by Hamaguchi in 1929, and under his cabinet the policy of moderation was restored. The army and its supporters felt that such vacillation earned Japan ill will and boycotts in China without gaining any advantages.

While many military leaders chafed under the restrictions that civilian governments placed upon them, they still retained considerable power. It would be wrong to attribute such resentment to all, or even most, of the high command, but enough army officers held such views to become a locus for dissatisfaction among other groups in Japanese society. The idea of the frugal and selfless samurai served as a useful contrast to the stock portrait of the selfish party politician.

Economic pressures and political misgivings were further exploited by civilian ultranationalists who portrayed parliamentary government as being “un-Japanese.” A number of rightist organizations existed that were dedicated to the theme of internal purity and external expansion. These sought to preserve what they thought was unique in the Japanese spirit and fought against excessive Western influence. Some originated in the Meiji period, when nationalists had felt obliged to work for a “fundamental settlement” of differences with Russia. Most, like the Black Dragon Society (Kokuryūkai), combined continental adventurism and a strong nationalist stance with opposition to party government, big business, acculturation, and Westernization. By allying with other rightists, they alternately terrorized and intimidated their presumed opponents. A number of business leaders and political figures were killed, and the assassins’ success in publicizing and dramatizing the virtues they claimed to embody had a considerable impact on the troubled 1930s. It is clear, however, that the terrorists never had as much influence as they claimed or as the West believed.

The principal force against parliamentary government was provided by junior military officers, who were largely from rural backgrounds. Distrustful of their senior leaders, ignorant of political economy, and contemptuous of the urban luxuries of politicians, such officers were ready marks for rightist theorists. Many of them had goals that were national-socialist in character. Kita Ikki, a former socialist and one-time member of the Black Dragon Society, contended that the Meiji constitution should be suspended in favour of a revolutionary regime advised by “national patriots” and headed by a military government, which should nationalize large properties, limit wealth, end party government and the peerage, and prepare to take the leadership of a revolutionary Asia. Kita helped persuade a number of young officers to take part in the violence of the 1930s with the hope of achieving these ends.

Aggression in Manchuria

The Kwantung Army, which occupied the Kwantung (Liaotung) Peninsula and patrolled the South Manchurian Railway zone, included officers who were keenly aware of Japan’s continental interests and were prepared to take steps to further them. They hoped to place the civilian government in an untenable position and to force its hand. The Tokyo terrorists similarly sought to change foreign as well as domestic policies. The pattern of direct action in Manchuria began with the murder in 1928 of Chang Tso-lin, the warlord ruler of Manchuria. The action, though not authorized by the Tanaka government, helped bring about its fall. Neither the cabinet nor the Diet dared to investigate and punish those responsible. This convinced extremist officers that their lofty motives would make retribution impossible. The succeeding government of Prime Minister Hamaguchi sought to curtail military activists and their powers. The next plots, therefore, were aimed at replacing civilian rule, and Hamaguchi was mortally wounded by an assassin in 1930. In March 1931 a coup involving highly placed army generals was planned but abandoned.

On September 18, 1931, came the Mukden (or Manchurian) Incident, which launched Japanese aggression in East Asia. A Kwantung Army charge that Chinese soldiers had tried to bomb a South Manchurian Railway train (which arrived at its destination safely) resulted in a speedy and unauthorized capture of Mukden (now Shen-yang), followed by the occupation of all Manchuria. The civilian government in Tokyo could not stop the army, and even army headquarters was not always in full control of the field commanders. Prime Minister Wakatsuki Reijirō gave way in December 1931 to Inukai Tsuyoshi. Inukai’s plans to stop the army by imperial intervention were frustrated. On May 15, 1932, naval officers took the lead in a terrorist attack in Tokyo that cost Inukai his life but failed to secure a proclamation of martial law. The army now announced that it would accept no party cabinet. To forestall its desire for power, the last genrō, Saionji, suggested retired Admiral Saitō Makoto as prime minister. Plotting continued, culminating in a revolt of a regiment about to leave for Manchuria. On February 26, 1936, several outstanding statesmen (including Saitō) were murdered; Prime Minister Okada Keisuke escaped when the assassins mistakenly shot his brother-in-law. For more than three days the rebel units held much of downtown Tokyo. When the revolt was put down on February 29, the ringleaders were quickly arrested and executed. Within the army, the influence of the young extremists now gave way to more conservative officers and generals who were less concerned with domestic reform, while sharing many of the foreign-policy goals of the young fanatics.

The only possible source of prestige sufficient to thwart the military lay with the throne. But the senior statesmen were cautious lest they imperil the imperial institution itself. The young emperor Hirohito had been enthroned in 1926, taking as his reign name Shōwa (“Enlightened Peace”). His outlook was more progressive than that of his predecessors; he had traveled in the West, and his interests lay in marine biology. Those close to the throne feared that a strong stand by the emperor would only widen the search for victims and could lead to his dethronement. As international criticism of Japan’s aggression grew, many Japanese rallied to support the army.

The road to World War II

Each advance by the military extremists gained them new concessions from the moderate elements in the government and brought greater foreign hostility and distrust. Rather than oppose the military, the government agreed to reconstitute Manchuria as an “independent” state, Manchukuo. The last Manchu emperor of China, P’u-i, was declared regent and later enthroned as emperor in 1934. Actual control lay with the Kwantung Army, however; all key positions were held by Japanese, with surface authority vested in cooperative Chinese and Manchu. A League of Nations committee recommended in October 1932 that Japanese troops be withdrawn, Chinese sovereignty restored, and a large measure of autonomy granted to Manchuria. The League called upon member states to withhold recognition from the new puppet state. Japan’s response was to formally withdraw from the world body in 1933. Thereafter, Japan poured technicians and capital into Manchukuo, exploiting its rich resources to establish the base for the heavy-industry complex that was to undergird its “new order” in East Asia.

Events in China

In northern China, boundary areas were consolidated in order to enlarge Japan’s economic sphere. In early 1932 the Japanese navy precipitated an incident at Shanghai in order to end a boycott of Japanese goods; but Japan was not yet prepared to challenge other powers for control of central China, and a League of Nations commission arranged terms for a withdrawal. By 1934, however, Japan had made it clear that it would brook no interference in its China policy and that Chinese attempts to procure technical or military assistance elsewhere would bring Japanese opposition.

Further external ambitions had to wait, however, for the resolution of domestic crises. The military revolt in Tokyo in February 1936 marked the high point of extremist action. In its wake power shifted to the military conservatives. Moreover, the finance minister Takahashi Korekiyo, whose policies had brought Japan out of its economic depression, was killed, and his opposition to further inflationary spending was thus stilled. In politics, the confrontation between the parties and the army continued. Efforts to find a leader who could represent both military and civilian interests led to the appointment to the premiership of the popular but ineffective Konoe Fumimaro, scion of an ancient court family, in 1937. Meanwhile, in China the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek had been kidnapped in the Sian Incident in December 1936, and this led to an anti-Japanese united front by Nationalists and Communists. Domestic politics revealed, moreover, that the Japanese people were not yet prepared to renounce their parliamentary system. In the spring of 1937, general elections showed startling gains for the new Social Mass (or Social Masses) Party (Shakai Taishūtō), which received 36 out of 466 seats, and a heavy majority of the remainder went to the Seiyūkai and Minseitō, which had combined forces against the government and its policies. The time seemed ready for new efforts by civilian leaders, but in the field the armies preempted them.

On July 7, 1937, Japanese troops engaged Chinese units at the Marco Polo Bridge near Beijing, leading to warfare between China and Japan. Japanese armies took Nanking, Han-k’ou (Hankow), and Canton despite vigorous Chinese resistance; Nanking was brutally pillaged by Japanese troops. To the north, Inner Mongolia and China’s northern provinces were invaded. On discovering that the Nationalist government, which had retreated up the Yangtze to Chungking, refused to compromise, the Japanese installed a more cooperative regime at Nanking in 1940.

Foreign relations

In November 1936 Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Germany and later with Italy. This was replaced by the Tripartite Pact in September 1940, which recognized Japan as the leader of a new order in Asia; Japan, Germany, and Italy agreed to assist each other if they were attacked by any additional power not yet at war with them. The intended target was the United States, since the Soviets and Nazis had already signed a nonaggression pact in 1939, and the Soviets were invited to join the new agreement later in 1940.

Japanese relations with the Soviet Union were considerably less cordial than those with Germany. The Soviets consented, however, to sell the Chinese Eastern Railway to the South Manchurian Railway in 1935, thereby strengthening Manchukuo. In 1937 the Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact with China, and in 1938 and 1939 Soviet and Japanese armies tested each other in two full-scale battles along the border of Manchukuo. But in April 1941 a neutrality pact was signed with the Soviet Union, with Germany acting as intermediary.

Japanese-German ties were never close or effective. Both parties were limited in their cooperation by distance, distrust, and claims of racial superiority. The Japanese were uninformed about Nazi plans for attacking the Soviet Union, and the Germans were not told of Japan’s plans to attack Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Nor, despite formal statements of rapport, did Japan’s state structure approach the totalitarianism of the Nazis. A national-mobilization law (1938) gave the Konoe government sweeping economic and political powers, and in 1940, under the second Konoe cabinet, the Imperial Rule Assistance Association was established to merge the political parties into one central organization; yet, the institutional structure of the Meiji constitution was never altered, and the wartime governments never achieved full control over interservice competition. The Imperial Rule Assistance Association failed to mobilize all segments of national life around a leader. The emperor remained a symbol, albeit an increasingly military one, and no führer could compete without endangering the national polity. Wartime social and economic thought retained important vestiges of an agrarianism and familism that were in essence premodern rather than totalitarian.

Japan’s relations with the democratic powers deteriorated steadily. The United States and Great Britain did what they could to assist the Chinese Nationalist cause. The Burma Road into southern China permitted the transport of minimal supplies to Nationalist forces. Constant Japanese efforts to close this route led to further tensions between Great Britain and Japan. Anti-Japanese feeling strengthened in the United States, especially after the sinking of a U.S. gunboat in the Yangtze River in 1937. In 1939 U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull renounced the 1911 treaty of commerce with Japan, and thus embargoes became possible in 1940. President Franklin Roosevelt’s efforts to rally public opinion against aggressors included efforts to stop Japan, but, even after war broke out in Europe in 1939, American public opinion rejected involvement abroad.

World War II and defeat

Prologue to war

The European war presented the Japanese with tempting opportunities. After the Nazi attack on Russia in 1941, the Japanese were torn between German urgings to join the war against the Soviets and their natural inclination to seek richer prizes from the European colonial territories to the south. In 1940 Japan occupied northern Indochina in an attempt to block access to supplies for the Chinese Nationalists, and in July 1941 it announced a joint protectorate with Vichy France over the whole colony. This opened the way for further moves into Southeast Asia.

The United States reacted to the occupation of Indochina by freezing Japanese assets and embargoing oil. The Japanese now faced the choices of either withdrawing from Indochina, and possibly China, or seizing the sources of oil production in the Dutch East Indies. Negotiations with Washington were initiated by the second Konoe cabinet. Konoe was willing to withdraw from Indochina, and he sought a personal meeting with Roosevelt, hoping that any U.S. concessions or favours would strengthen his hand against the military. But the State Department refused to agree to such a meeting without prior Japanese concessions. Having failed in his negotiations, Konoe resigned in October 1941 and was immediately succeeded by his war minister, General Tōjō Hideki. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hull rejected Japan’s “final offer”: Japan would withdraw from Indochina after China had come to terms in return for U.S. promises to resume oil shipments, cease aid to China, and unfreeze Japanese assets. With Japan’s decision for war made, the negotiators received instructions to continue to negotiate, but preparations for the opening strike against the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor were already in motion. Japan’s war aims were to establish a “new order in East Asia,” built on a “coprosperity” concept that placed Japan at the centre of an economic bloc consisting of Manchuria, Korea, and North China that would draw on the raw materials of the rich colonies of Southeast Asia, while inspiring these to friendship and alliance by destroying their previous masters. In practice, “East Asia for the Asiatics,” the slogan that headed the campaign, came to mean “East Asia for Japan.”

Early successes

The attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7 [December 8 in Japan], 1941) achieved complete surprise and success. It also unified American opinion and determination to see the war through to a successful conclusion. The Japanese had expected that, once they fortified their new holdings, a reconquest would be so expensive in lives and treasure that it would discourage the “soft” democracies. Instead, the U.S. fleet was rebuilt with astonishing speed, and the chain of defenses was breached before the riches of the newly conquered territories could be effectively tapped by Japan.

The first years of the war brought Japan great success. In the Philippines, Japanese troops occupied Manila in January 1942, although Corregidor held out until May; Singapore fell in February, and the Dutch East Indies and Rangoon (Burma) in early March. The Allies had difficulty maintaining communications with Australia, and British naval losses promised the Japanese navy further freedom of action. Tōjō grew in confidence and popularity and began to style himself somewhat in the manner of a fascist leader. But the U.S. Navy had not been permanently driven from the South Pacific. The Battle of Midway in June 1942 cost the Japanese fleet four aircraft carriers and many seasoned pilots, and the battle for Guadalcanal Island in the Solomons ended with Japanese withdrawal in February 1943.

Japan on the defensive

After Midway, Japanese naval leaders secretly concluded that Japan’s outlook for victory was poor. When the fall of Saipan in July 1944 brought U.S. bombers within range of Tokyo, the Tōjō cabinet was replaced by that of Koiso Kuniaki. Koiso formed a supreme war-direction council designed to link the cabinet and the high command. Many in government realized that the war was lost, but none had a program for ending the war that was acceptable to the military. There were also grave problems in breaking the news to the Japanese people, who had been told only of victories. Great firebombing raids in 1945 brought destruction to every major city except the old capital of Kyōto; but the generals were bent on continuing the war, confident that a major victory or protracted battle would help gain honourable terms. The Allied talk of unconditional surrender provided a good excuse to continue the fight.

In February 1945 the emperor met with a group of senior statesmen to discuss steps that might be taken. When U.S. landings were made on Okinawa in April, the Koiso government fell. The problem of the new premier, Admiral Suzuki Kantarō, was not whether to end the war but how best to do it. The first plan advanced was to ask the Soviet Union, which was still at peace with Japan, to intercede with the Allies. The Soviet government had agreed, however, to enter the war; consequently, its reply was delayed while Soviet leaders participated in the Potsdam Conference in July. The Potsdam Declaration issued on July 26 offered the first ray of hope with its statement that Japan would not be “enslaved as a race, nor destroyed as a nation.”

The end of the war

Atomic bombs largely destroyed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, respectively. On August 8 the Soviet Union declared war and the next day marched into Manchuria, where the Kwantung Army could offer only token resistance. The Japanese government attempted to gain as its sole condition for surrender a qualification for the preservation of the imperial institution; after the Allies agreed to respect the will of the Japanese people, the emperor insisted on surrender. The Pacific war came to an end on August 14 (August 15 in Japan). The formal surrender was signed on September 2 in Tokyo Bay aboard the battleship USS Missouri.

Military extremists attempted unsuccessfully to prevent the radio broadcast of the emperor’s announcement to the nation. There were a number of suicides among the military officers and nationalists who felt themselves dishonoured, but the emperor’s prestige and personal will, once expressed, sufficed to bring an orderly transition. To increase the appearance of direct rule, the Suzuki cabinet was replaced by that of Prince Higashikuni Naruhiko.

Postwar investigators concluded that neither the atomic bombs nor the Soviet entry into the war was central to the decision to surrender, although they probably helped to advance the date. It was determined that submarine blockade of the Japanese islands had brought economic defeat by preventing exploitation of Japan’s new colonies, sinking merchant tonnage, and convincing Japanese leaders of the hopelessness of the war. Bombing brought the consciousness of defeat to the people. The destruction of the Japanese navy and air force jeopardized the home islands. Japan’s largest armies, however, were never defeated, and this was responsible for the army’s eagerness to fight on. By the end of the war, Japan’s cities were destroyed, its stockpiles exhausted, and its industrial capacity gutted. The government stood without prestige or respect. An alarming shortage of food and rising inflation threatened what remained of national strength.

Japan since 1945

The early postwar decades

Occupation

From 1945 to 1952 Japan was under Allied military occupation, headed by the Supreme Commander for Allied Powers (SCAP), a position held by U.S. General Douglas MacArthur until 1951. Although nominally directed by a multinational Far Eastern Commission in Washington, D.C., and an Allied Council in Tokyo—which included the United States, the Soviet Union, China, and the Commonwealth countries—the occupation was almost entirely an American affair. While MacArthur developed a large General Headquarters in Tokyo to carry out occupation policy, supported by local “military government” teams, Japan, unlike Germany, was not governed directly by foreign troops. Instead, SCAP relied on the Japanese government and its organs, particularly the bureaucracy, to carry out its directives.

The occupation, like the Taika Reform of the 7th century and the Meiji Restoration 80 years earlier, represented a period of rapid social and institutional change that was based on the borrowing and incorporation of foreign models. General principles for the proposed governance of Japan had been spelled out in the Potsdam Declaration and elucidated in U.S. government policy statements drawn up and forwarded to MacArthur in August 1945. The essence of these policies was simple and straightforward: the demilitarization of Japan, so that it would not again become a danger to peace; democratization, meaning that, while no particular form of government would be forced upon the Japanese, efforts would be made to develop a political system under which individual rights would be guaranteed and protected; and the establishment of an economy that could adequately support a peaceful and democratic Japan.

MacArthur himself shared the vision of a demilitarized and democratic Japan and was well suited to the task at hand. An administrator of considerable skill, he possessed elements of leadership and charisma that appealed to the defeated Japanese. Brooking neither domestic nor foreign interference, MacArthur enthusiastically set about creating a new Japan. He encouraged an environment in which new forces could and did rise, and, where his reforms corresponded to trends already established in Japanese society, they played a vital role in Japan’s recovery as a free and independent nation.

In the early months of the occupation, SCAP acted swiftly to remove the principal supports of the militarist state. The armed forces were demobilized and millions of Japanese troops and civilians abroad repatriated. The empire was disbanded. State Shintō was disestablished, and nationalist organizations were abolished and their members removed from important posts. Japan’s armament industries were dismantled. The Home Ministry with its prewar powers over the police and local government was abolished; the police force was decentralized and its extensive power revoked. The Education Ministry’s sweeping powers over education were curtailed, and compulsory courses on ethics (shūshin) were eliminated. All individuals prominent in wartime organizations and politics, including commissioned officers of the armed services and all high executives of the principal industrial firms, were removed from their positions. An international tribunal was established to conduct war crimes trials, and seven men, including the wartime prime minister Tōjō, were convicted and hanged; another 16 were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Political reform

The most important reform carried out by the occupation was the establishment of a new constitution. In 1945 SCAP made it clear to Japanese government leaders that revision of the Meiji constitution should receive their highest priority. When Japanese efforts to write a new document proved inadequate, MacArthur’s government section prepared its own draft and presented it to the Japanese government as a basis for further deliberations. Endorsed by the emperor, this document was placed before the first postwar Diet in April 1946. It was formally promulgated on November 3 and went into effect on May 3, 1947.

The emphasis in the new constitution was clearly on the people rather than the throne. Sovereignty now lay with the people. A 31-article bill of rights followed, with Article 9 renouncing forever “war as a sovereign right of the nation” and pledging that “land, sea and air forces” would “never be maintained.” The emperor, no longer “sacred” or “inviolable,” was now described as the “symbol of the state and of the unity of the people.” The constitution called for a bicameral Diet, with the greatest power concentrated in the House of Representatives, members of which would now be elected by both men and women. The old peerage was dissolved, and the House of Peers was replaced by a House of Councillors. The Privy Council was abolished. The prime minister was to be chosen by the Diet from its members, and an independent judiciary was established with the right of judicial review.

Despite its hasty preparation and foreign inspiration, the new constitution gained wide public support. Although the ruling conservatives desired to revise it after Japan regained its sovereignty in 1952, and an official commission favoured changes in the constitution in 1964, no political group in postwar Japan has been able to secure the two-thirds majority needed to make revisions. While parts of the structure established by the document have been modified through administrative actions—including a reversal of the principle of decentralization in areas such as the police, the school system, and some spheres of local administration—and while Article 9 has been compromised by the decision to form a National Police Reserve that in 1954 became the Self-Defense Forces, the basic principles of the constitution have enjoyed support among all factions in Japanese politics. Executive leadership proved to be the chief asset of the new institutions, and, with the abolition of the competing forces that had hampered the premiers of the 1930s, Japan’s postwar prime ministers have found themselves firmly in charge of the administration and (with limited rearmament) the armed forces as well. Thus, responsible leadership gradually replaced the ambiguous claims of imperial rule of earlier days.

Economic and social changes

The occupation’s political democratization was reinforced by economic and social changes. SCAP was aware that political democracy in Japan required not only a weakening of the value structure of the hierarchic “family state,” which restricted the individual, but also a liberation of the Japanese people from the economic forces that reinforced such a state. With nearly half of Japan’s farmers subsisting as tenants, Americans saw little hope for democracy in Japan without significant changes in the ownership of land. Occupation authorities therefore set out to establish a program of land reform that was designed to convert tenants into owner-farmers. Through legislation a plan was devised whereby landlords, many of whom lived in the cities, were forced to divest themselves of a high proportion of their holdings to the government. This land was then sold to tenants on favourable terms. Given the fact that prices were set at wartime and postwar pre-inflation rates, landlords were essentially expropriated. Still, the reforms were implemented with great efficiency and in the end proved highly successful. Supported by favourable tax and price arrangements, the majority of Japan’s new owner-farmers gained control of their land, which on average consisted of about 2.5 acres (1 hectare) per farm. Benefited by agricultural subsidies and government-maintained high agricultural prices, the Japanese countryside experienced increased prosperity. Rural voters became not only the mainstay of the conservative Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP) after its formation in 1955 (fulfilling the original American intent), but as one of Japan’s most powerful lobbies they often successfully resisted agricultural trade liberalization. In a reversal of the Taishō dilemma that sprang from low domestic consumption, land reform and agricultural price supports contributed significantly to Japan’s emergence as a consumer economy in the 1950s and ’60s.

Initial Allied plans had contemplated exacting heavy reparations from Japan, but the unsettled state of other Asian countries that were to have been recipients brought reconsideration. Except for Japanese assets overseas and a small number of war plants, reparations were largely limited to those worked out between Japan and its Asian victims after the Treaty of Peace with Japan was signed in 1951.

The dissolution of Japan’s great financial houses (zaibatsu) also was an early occupation priority, but it gave way under Cold War pressures. Although the zaibatsu originally were seen as the chief potential war makers, the need for an economically viable Japan changed this perspective to viewing them as essential for economic recovery. Thus, of 1,200 concerns marked for investigation and possible dissolution, fewer than 30 were broken up by SCAP, though the major units of the zaibatsu empires—holding companies—were dissolved and their securities made available for public purchase. New legislation sought to enforce fair trading and to guard against a return to monopolies. The war itself, new postwar tax policies, and the purges that removed many top executives further undercut the largest firms. By 1950 extensive changes, although far short of those initially proposed, had taken place in the industrial world. The large banks, however, were not broken up and proved to be the centres for a measure of reconsolidation in the years after the occupation ended.

Strengthening the influence of labour in Japan also was seen as important for the advancement of democracy. A new Ministry of Labour was established in 1947. Laws on trade unions and labour relations modeled on New Deal legislation in the United States were passed, and a strong union movement was initially encouraged. Leaders of this movement included a number of socialists and communists who had been released from prison by the occupation. But a proposed general strike in 1947 and the Cold War-induced shift toward rapid economic reconstruction, anti-inflationary policies, and a control of radicalism quickly resulted in a purge of left-wing labour leaders and an effort to bring labour under government control. In 1948 SCAP ordered the government to take steps to deprive government workers—including those in communications unions—of the right to strike. At the same time a new labour organization, the General Council of Trade Unions of Japan (Sōhyō), was sponsored as a counterweight and gradual replacement for the Congress of Industrial Labour Unions of Japan (Sambetsu Kaigi), which had become dominated by the left. In the late 1950s Sōhyō, too, had become increasingly antigovernment and anti-American, its Marxist and socialist orientation finding a political voice in the Japan Socialist Party (JSP), of which it became the leading supporter.

Postwar social legislation also provided relief from earlier restrictions. The civil code, which had supported the power of the male family head in the past, was rewritten to allow for equality between the sexes and joint inheritance rights. Women were given the right to vote and to sit in the Diet.

Educational reforms

Occupation authorities, convinced that democracy and equality were best inculcated through education, revised the Japanese educational system. A Fundamental Law of Education was passed in 1947, which guaranteed academic freedom, extended the length of compulsory education from six to nine years, and provided for coeducation. Americans were convinced that Japanese education had been too concerned with rote memorization and indoctrination and that what Japan needed was a curriculum that encouraged initiative and self-reliance. The prewar system of special channels that led to vocational training, higher technical schools, or universities was seen as essentially elitist, and the occupation therefore supported the standardization of grade levels so that completion of any level would allow entrance to the next. The American 6-3-3-4 structure of elementary, lower secondary, higher secondary, and undergraduate higher education was adopted. Entrance to high schools and universities came to depend on passing highly competitive examinations, which many Japanese young people still call “examination hell.” Other efforts to democratize education were made. To complement Japan’s prewar elite institutions, such as Tokyo Imperial University (now the University of Tokyo), the Americans sought to encourage the establishment of prefectural universities and junior colleges. By the 1960s college and university graduates numbered nearly four times their prewar counterparts, and there were some 565 universities and junior colleges.

Political trends

Politics under the occupation and new constitution experienced considerable flux, as many of Japan’s prewar leaders found themselves purged from public office and the two prewar parties, the Seiyūkai and Minseitō, restructured themselves as the Liberal and Progressive parties, respectively (the latter eventually becoming the Japan Democratic Party). On the left wing, the socialists and communists also reorganized their respective parties. Initial postwar elections included many political splinter groups. Faced with a lack of consensus, cabinets tended to be unstable and short-lived. This was true of the first Yoshida Shigeru cabinet (1946–47), which implemented most of the early SCAP reforms only to be replaced by an equally transitory cabinet headed by the Socialist Katayama Tetsu (1947–48). A similar fate confronted Ashida Hitoshi, who became prime minister for five months in 1948. Yoshida’s return to power in the fall of 1948 resulted in a more stable situation and ushered in the Yoshida era, which lasted until 1954. During those years, Japan capitalized on the economic benefits of close cooperation with the United States during the Korean War (1950–53), which laid the groundwork for national reconstruction and for the essential postwar U.S.-Japan relationship. In 1951 Yoshida achieved what he regarded as his greatest accomplishment—the restoration of national sovereignty—by taking Japan to the San Francisco peace conference. There, with the American negotiator John Foster Dulles and representatives of 47 nations, he hammered out the final details of the Treaty of Peace with Japan. The treaty was formally signed on September 8, 1951, and the occupation of Japan ended on April 28, 1952.

The era of rapid growth

From 1952 to 1973 Japan experienced accelerated economic growth and social change. By 1952 Japan had at last regained its prewar industrial output. Thereafter, the economy expanded at unprecedented rates. At the same time, economic development and industrialization supported the emergence of a mass consumer society. Large numbers of Japanese who had previously resided in villages became urbanized; Tokyo, whose population stood at about three million in 1945, reached some nine million by 1970. Initial close ties to the United States fostered by the Mutual Security Treaty gave way to occasional tensions over American policies toward Vietnam, China, and exchange rates. The first trade frictions, over Japanese textile exports, took place at that time. Meanwhile, foreign culture, as was the case in the 1920s, greatly influenced young urban dwellers, who in the postwar period broke with their own traditions and turned increasingly to Hollywood and American popular culture for alternatives. Japan’s new international image was projected and enhanced by events such as the highly successful 1964 Olympic Summer Games and the Ōsaka World Exposition of 1970.

Economic transformation

The Korean War marked the turn from economic depression to recovery for Japan. As the staging area for the United Nations forces on the Korean peninsula, Japan profited indirectly from the war, as valuable procurement orders for goods and services were assigned to Japanese suppliers. The Japanese economy at the return of independence in 1952 was in the process of growth and change. Sustained prosperity and high annual growth rates, which averaged 10 percent in 1955–60 and later climbed to more than 13 percent, changed all sectors of Japanese life. The countryside, where farmers had benefited from land reform, began to feel the effects of small-scale mechanization and a continuous migration to industrial centres. Agricultural yields rose as improved strains of crops and modern technology were introduced, as household appliances appeared in remote villages, and as the changing patterns of urban food consumption provided an expanded market for cash crops, fruits and vegetables, and meat products. Efforts to control population growth, which had begun with the legalization of abortion in 1948 and included a national campaign to encourage family planning, showed considerable success, as the population stabilized and thereafter grew slowly. Gains in economic output, therefore, were not offset by a rapidly expanding population, and steady industrial growth brought full employment and even labour shortages.

Two elements underscored rapid growth in the 1960s. The first was the development of a consumer economy, which was given a significant boost by Ikeda Hayato’s Income Doubling Plan of 1960. This plan reaffirmed the government’s responsibility for social welfare, vocational training, and education, while also redefining growth to include consumers as well as producers. The second was the new industrial policy that emerged out of the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MITI) in 1959. Under these influences the structure of the Japanese economy changed to concentrate on high-quality and high-technology products designed for domestic and foreign consumption. The production of such products also emphasized Japan’s need for stable, economically advanced trading partners to replace the Asian markets to which inexpensive textiles had been sent earlier. Improvements in transportation—e.g., cargo-handling methods and bulk transport by large ore carriers and tankers—helped to remove the disadvantage of the greater distances over which Japan’s products had to be shipped. Most important, the large and growing domestic market was rendering invalid earlier generalizations about Japan’s need for cheap labour and captive Asian colonies to sustain its economy. The era of high growth continued until the “oil shock” of 1973: the embargo by OPEC (the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Nations). In the interim, Japan’s output shifted with world currents, and its industrial expansion made it a world leader in shipbuilding, electronics, precision optical equipment, steel, automobiles, and high technology. In the 1960s Japanese exports expanded at an annual rate of more than 15 percent, and in 1965 Japan revealed the first signs that it had a trade surplus.

A number of factors greatly aided Japan’s economic resurgence during the 1950s and ’60s. One was the complete destruction of the nation’s industrial base by the war. This meant that Japan’s new factories, using the latest developments in technology, were often more efficient than those of their foreign competitors. The Japanese became enthusiastic followers of the American statistician W. Edward Deming’s ideas on quality control and soon began producing goods that were more reliable and contained fewer flaws than those of the United States and western Europe. At the same time, Japan was able to import, under license, advanced foreign technology at relatively low cost. With the addition of a youthful and well-educated workforce, a high domestic savings rate that provided ample capital, and an activist government and bureaucracy that provided guidance, support, and subsidies, the ingredients were in place for rapid and sustained economic growth.

Social change

Two major changes were visible in the social life of the Japanese from 1952 to 1973. The first was the significant decline in the birth rate that stabilized the Japanese population. The second was the population shift from the countryside to urban centres. In addition to birth control, such factors as a more highly educated populace, postponement of marriage in favour of education and employment, and a desire for greater independence in early adulthood contributed to changing fertility patterns—as did the increasing conviction among many couples that it was in their economic self-interest to have fewer children. But even with a stable population Japan remained one of the world’s most densely populated countries.

As population growth slowed and the economy expanded, Japan faced a labour shortage that drew workers from agriculture, as well as from small and medium enterprises, to the new large-scale industries of the cities. The resulting shift in Japan’s population was dramatic. In the Meiji period the rural population of Japan stood at 85 percent of the national total; by 1945 it was approximately 50 percent, and by 1970 it had fallen to less than 20 percent. In the process, both village and urban life underwent significant changes. Factories were built in the countryside as industrialists tried to tap into the still-underemployed rural labour force. Agriculture itself became increasingly mechanized and commercialized. As sons, and even husbands, went off to the factories, women, children, and the elderly were often left to run the family farm. At the same time, the face of rural Japan changed, with hard-surfaced roads, concrete schools, factories, and sales outlets for automobiles and farm equipment replacing the once timeless thatched-roof houses. By 1970 the average farm household income had risen higher than its urban counterpart, providing considerable rural purchasing power. Television tied rural households to urban Japan and to the world beyond. Young men brought up on visions of urban life as projected by American television programs were eager to move to the cities after graduation from high school. Young women showed increasing reluctance to become farm wives, and in some instances villagers sought spouses for their sons in Southeast Asia. Rural solidarity suffered from such out-migration, and in many cases prewar village life ceased to be, as villages amalgamated into cities and struggled to develop new identities.

Cities also underwent rapid change. By 1972 one in every nine Japanese lived in Tokyo and one in four lived in the Tokyo-Ōsaka industrial corridor. As the national centre for government, finance, business, industry, education, and the arts, Tokyo became a magnet for many Japanese and the quintessential expression of Japanese urban life.

But while Tokyo and other large cities remained highly attractive, urban dwellers also faced serious problems, notably housing. Living space for most urban dwellers was infinitesimal when compared with Western societies. Although Japanese bristled when Westerners described them as living in “rabbit hutches,” apartments with 125 square feet (12 square metres) of living space—often with shared facilities—were common. Such apartments were often found in drab residential developments that pushed out at greater distances from the inner wards of major cities and required increased commuting times. The dream of owning one’s home, which most urban dwellers sought to keep alive, was already becoming increasingly elusive by the 1970s. In 1972 the price of land in or near Japan’s largest cities was some 25 times higher than it had been in 1955, far surpassing the rise in the average urban worker’s disposable income for the same period. While government and private industry were able to provide some low-cost housing, higher-priced housing in the form of high-rise condominiums, or “mansions,” proliferated, and for most Japanese urbanites housing remained the chief flaw in Japan’s postwar economic “miracle.”

If urban life retained a number of density-induced drawbacks—which in addition to housing included few parks and open spaces, limited sewage systems, and an overcrowded transportation network of trains, subways, and buses that often required “pushers” and “pullers” to get passengers on and off—it also had its compensations in a rising standard of living and the entertainments that money afforded in splendid department stores, shopping areas, movie houses, coffee shops, bars, nightclubs and restaurants. The impact of American culture was everywhere. Young urbanites, in particular, took with gusto to jazz and rock music, pinball machines, American soft drinks and fast foods, baseball, and the freer social relations that typified American dating patterns. American fashions of dress and grooming, often set by movie and rock stars, quickly found bands of faithful imitators. Indeed, almost every American fad from the hula hoop to hang gliding had its Japanese supporters.

Urban life also brought about changes in traditional Japanese family and gender relationships. The position of women improved, as many more now went to high schools and colleges. Most found urban employment until marriage. As arranged marriages declined and “love” matches increased, marriage customs also changed. Urban living promoted the ideal of the nuclear family, particularly as housing conditions made it difficult for the extended family to live together. Urban dwellers found themselves less dependent on the goodwill of their neighbours. There was also less need for the conformity that typified rural life—although for many recent arrivals the city-based company and factory effectively restructured village values to support an efficient workplace.

The majority of villagers actually made the transition from rural to urban life with less social stress than was the case in Europe and America. Juvenile delinquency showed some increase, but overall crime rates remained low. So-called “new” religions such as Sōka Gakkai (Value-Creation Society), which strongly appealed to those feeling isolated or alienated, flourished in the 1950s and ’60s. Disparities between the newly rich and the older generation living on fixed incomes and between a freer, franker, and often more egotistic and brash mass culture that appealed to the young and traditional taste set by what once had been the aristocracy often accentuated how generations viewed the postwar situation. For many of the older generation, the new culture epitomized moral decay, which they attributed to the postwar system of education; to the young, the older generation seemed out of touch with the new realities that Japan faced. Such a generational split was further dramatized in the universities, where older professors were firmly in control but where young people struggled to find ways of expressing their own positions, which, typically, were often far more radical than those of their teachers.

Political developments

With the restoration of sovereignty, politicians who had been purged by the occupation were allowed to return to public life. This included a number of prewar rightists who had been active in the 1930s. But the ideological right found few adherents among the postwar generation, and without military or big-business support the right wing played a largely dormant role during the 1950s and ’60s. Occasionally disturbing incidents, such as the 1960 assassination of the socialist leader Asanuma Inajirō by a right-wing activist, revealed that the right was still able to intimidate; but rightists, for the most part, concentrated on campaigns to restore the use of the national flag, revive such national holidays as Foundation Day (February 11; succeeded in 1966), and restore state sponsorship for Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo (where Japan’s war dead, notably those of World War II, are enshrined). The left fared considerably better. Communists who returned to Japan from foreign exile or who were released from domestic prisons played a vigorous role in the immediate postwar political arena. In 1949 the Japan Communist Party (JCP) elected 35 candidates to the lower house and garnered 10 percent of the vote. But by 1952 the Korean War (which had led SCAP to purge communists from public office), steady improvements in living conditions, and uncooperative Soviet attitudes in negotiations over the return of the Kuril Islands and over fishing treaties had seriously undermined public support for the communists, as did communist opposition to the imperial institution and extremist labour tactics. Still, Marxist, and later Maoist, ideas remained highly appealing to large numbers of Japanese intellectuals and college students, and the noncommunist left became a major voice for opposition in Japanese politics.

The year 1955 was highly significant in postwar politics. The right and left wings of the socialist movement, which had been divided since 1951 over the peace treaty, merged to form the Japan Socialist Party (JSP). Faced with this united opposition the conservative parties, the Liberals and the Democrats, joined to found the Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP). Japan thus entered a period of essentially two-party politics. The dominant LDP, which inherited Yoshida’s mantle, worked effectively to solidify the close ties he had created with bureaucrats, bankers, and the business community. As a result, ex-bureaucrats played significant roles in the LDP, often being elected to the Diet and becoming important cabinet members. Three of the next six prime ministers (all from the LDP) who succeeded Yoshida—Kishi Nobusuke, Ikeda Hayato, and Satō Eisaku—were ex-bureaucrats. These close government-business ties, which became essential to domestic economic growth, later were characterized as “Japan Incorporated” in the West.

Ideologically, the LDP combined a strong commitment to economic growth with the desire to return Japan to world prominence. The party depended on the financial support of business and banking, but its voter base remained in rural Japan. At the local level, LDP politicians established political networks that became the hallmarks of postwar politics and emphasized the role of personal “machine” politics over party platforms. But individual LDP Diet members realized that in order to provide patronage for their constituents they needed the support of party leaders with access to the bureaucracy. Factions therefore formed around such leaders, who vied with one another for the premiership and sought to have members of their faction appointed to important cabinet posts.

As the voice of the opposition, the JSP resisted rearmament, had a strong antinuclear stance, campaigned to rid Japan of the American bases and abrogate the Mutual Security Treaty, supported mainland China, and vigorously opposed all efforts to change the postwar constitution. The appeal of the JSP was directed both to urban intellectuals and to the working classes, and its financial support came largely from labour (Sōhyō). In contrast to the LDP’s focus on economic growth, big business, and agriculture, the JSP concentrated on urban issues, on those bypassed by prosperity, and on the mounting problems of pollution and environmental degradation that accompanied accelerated industrial growth. Socialist influence was weakened, however, when the more right-wing JSP members split off to form the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) in 1959.

By the early 1970s urban issues also attracted the JCP, which started to substitute practical matters for ideology and won a number of mayoral elections. To the right of the communists and socialists appeared the Clean Government Party (Kōmeitō; later renamed the New Clean Government Party), which began in 1964 as the political arm of Sōka Gakkai but dissociated itself from the religion by 1970; like its opposition counterparts, it focused on the urban electorate. On occasion, as in 1960 with the Kishi government and the proposed renewal of the U.S-Japan Mutual Security Treaty, the opposition could mount sufficient public support to bring down an LDP cabinet, but on the whole the era was one in which the LDP remained firmly in power.

Still, by the late 1960s and early ’70s there also were signs of a decline in LDP support. Dissatisfaction with the party’s handling of domestic labour issues, Japan’s involvement in the Vietnam War, demands for the reversion of Okinawa to Japanese sovereignty, and extensive student uprisings on university campuses, combined with growing doubts about the effects of unbridled growth and the increasing dangers from pollution, all undercut the party’s popularity. In 1952 the LDP had garnered two-thirds of the Diet seats, but by 1972 it controlled only slightly more than half. The effects of the so-called “Nixon shocks” in 1971, which allowed the yen to rise against the dollar and restructured the U.S.-China (and hence the Japan-China) relationship, were compounded in 1973 by the OPEC oil crisis that threatened the underpinnings of Japan’s postwar prosperity and the LDP’s political hegemony.

International relations

The Japan that returned to the international community in 1952 was considerably reduced in territory and influence. The Republic of China (Taiwan), the People’s Republic of China on the mainland, the Republic of Korea (South Korea), and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) all possessed military establishments far larger than what became Japan’s Self-Defense Forces. Given the rise of the Cold War, international relations were not destined to be conducted on the pacifist lines envisioned by Article 9 of the constitution. The United States maintained its occupancy of Okinawa and the Ryukyus, while the Soviet Union occupied the entire Kuril chain and claimed southern Sakhalin. The Korean War increased the urgency for a peace treaty. Details for such a treaty were worked out by the United States and its noncommunist allies during the command of General Matthew B. Ridgway, who succeeded MacArthur as supreme commander in April 1951.

The San Francisco peace conference that convened in September 1951 thus ratified arrangements that had been worked out earlier. In the peace treaty that ensued, Japan recognized the independence of Korea and renounced all rights to Taiwan, the Pescadores, the Kurils, and southern Sakhalin and gave up the rights to the Pacific islands earlier mandated to it by the League of Nations. The Soviet Union attended the conference but refused to sign the treaty. This enabled Japan to retain hope for regaining four islands of the Kurils closest to Hokkaido—territory that Japan had gained through negotiations, not war. The peace treaty recognized Japan’s “right to individual and collective self-defense,” which it exercised through the United States–Japan Security Treaty (1951) by which U.S. forces remained in Japan until the Japanese secured their own defense. Japan agreed not to grant similar rights to a third power without U.S. approval. Americans promised to assist Japan’s Self-Defense Forces while U.S. military units (except air detachments and naval forces) were withdrawn to Okinawa.

The treaty made no arrangements for reparations to the victims of Japan’s Pacific war but provided that Japan should negotiate with the countries concerned. Consequently, effective resumption of relations with the countries of Asia came only after treaties covering reparations had been worked out with them. These were signed with Burma (now Myanmar) in 1954, the Philippines in 1956, and Indonesia in 1958. In 1956 Japan restored diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union but without a formal peace treaty. With the Soviet Union no longer blocking the way, Japan was admitted to the United Nations in late 1956 and subsequently became active in United Nations meetings and specialized agencies. It also became a contributing member of the Colombo Plan group of countries for economic development in South and Southeast Asia, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Japan spearheaded the creation of the Asian Development Bank in 1965–66.

At the time of the peace treaty, Prime Minister Yoshida wanted to delay committing Japan to either of the two Chinas, but the U.S. negotiator John Foster Dulles convinced him that the treaty would be opposed in the U.S. Senate unless assurances were given that Japan would recognize the Republic of China. Thus, Tokyo soon negotiated a peace treaty with that regime, but one that would not prejudice subsequent negotiations with Beijing. A lively trade developed with Taiwan, where Japan made considerable contributions to the economy.

Trade relationships with mainland China developed slowly in the absence of diplomatic ties. In 1953 an unofficial trade pact was signed between private Japanese groups and Chinese authorities. In addition, a semiofficial “memorandum” trade became increasingly important in the 1960s. The Chinese government made skillful use of trade for political purposes, in the hope of embarrassing or weakening Japan’s conservative governments, and intervals of ideological tension on the mainland—e.g., the Great Leap Forward (1958–60) and the Cultural Revolution (1966–76)—usually were reflected in a decline or cessation of trade with Japan. Nevertheless, Japan gradually became China’s most important trading partner.

U.S. overtures toward mainland China in 1971 led to a rapid reorientation of Japan’s China policy. Japanese government leaders indicated a willingness to compromise ties with Taiwan in favour of a closer relationship with Beijing. Beijing also revealed a new interest in formal relations with Japan, subject to Japan’s revocation of its treaty with Taiwan. In 1972, a year after mainland China was admitted to the UN, Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei reached an agreement with Beijing on steps to normalize relations. Japan simultaneously severed its ties with Taiwan, replacing its embassy with a nonofficial office.

Japan’s post-occupation relationship with the United States was founded on the 1951 security treaty. Part of the understanding that lay behind this treaty was that Japan would have access to the U.S. market in exchange for the maintenance of American bases on Japanese soil. While the LDP saw advantages to maintaining such a quid pro quo relationship, which allowed Japan to dramatically expand its foreign trade while avoiding undue security costs, Japan’s opposition parties were less sanguine about a relationship that tied Japan directly into the increasingly hostile Cold War. Tensions therefore mounted as the renewal date of the treaty (scheduled for 1960) approached; both governments hoped to extend it for 10 years as the revised Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security. The situation was complicated by domestic dislike of Kishi Nobusuke, who had become prime minister in 1957 after having earlier served in the Tōjō cabinet. Kishi had been named, though not tried, as a war criminal by the occupation. His staunch anticommunist stand, his open support of constitutional revision, and his undemocratic tactics made him suspect among many Japanese who felt they had been only marginally involved in the making of the original treaty and were anxious about the nation’s future. Added to this was the proposed visit to Japan by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower that was scheduled amid new tensions caused by the downing of a U.S. reconnaissance plane by the Soviet Union in May 1960. When the Kishi cabinet used its majority in the Diet to force through treaty revisions, opposition increased steadily. Gigantic public demonstrations, largely composed of students, shook Tokyo for days. In the end the treaty survived, but Eisenhower’s visit was canceled and Kishi resigned in July 1960.

The administration of U.S. President John F. Kennedy caught the imagination of many Japanese, and Kennedy’s designation of the popular scholar Edwin O. Reischauer as ambassador further improved Japanese-American relations. But by the late 1960s the unpopularity of the Vietnam War threatened to disturb the relationship once more. Prime ministers Ikeda and Satō worked hard to remove the final reminders of war. In 1967, under Satō, the Bonin (Ogasawara) Islands were restored to Japan; and in 1969, on the eve of renewed negotiations over treaty revisions, the United States agreed to return the Ryukyus in 1972, although bases were to be maintained on Okinawa under the terms of the security treaty. The treaty was renewed without incident in 1970, now changed to allow termination by either side with a year’s advanced notification. Thus, by 1972 the U.S.-Japan relationship had stabilized. While signs of change on the part of both countries could be found in their China policies, there was as yet little to indicate the mounting conflict over trade that subsequently emerged.

The late 20th and early 21st centuries

Economic change

By the early 1970s a series of forces had combined to bring to an end the era of high growth that Japan had experienced in the 1950s and ’60s. These included significant advances in technology, the disappearance of ample rural labour for industry, and the decline in international competitiveness of heavy manufacturing industries such as shipbuilding, aluminum, fertilizers, and, later, steel. Outcries over urban congestion, pollution, and environmental degradation and dissatisfaction with ever-escalating land prices caused many middle-class Japanese to question the economic and political logic that linked growth with national success. The foreign trading environment also was changing. In 1971 the United States devalued the U.S. dollar by 17 percent against the Japanese yen. The OPEC oil embargo of 1973–74 created a further disruption of the Japanese economy, which depended heavily on Middle Eastern oil. Outbreaks of panic buying by consumers brought reminders of the essential fragility of Japan’s economic position; the rapid rise in the price of oil ended an era of relatively cheap and abundant energy resources. Thus, by the mid-1970s many Japanese felt increasingly insecure about their place in the global economy. Japanese dependency on fuel and food—as demonstrated by the consternation caused in 1972 when the United States temporarily embargoed soybean exports to Japan—had become increasingly clear.

During the 1970s and ’80s, consequently, Japan tried to integrate its economy more effectively into the global system and sought to diversify its markets and sources of raw materials. Japan became a firm advocate of international free trade and tried to create at least a measure of energy self-sufficiency through the increased use of nuclear power. The economic uncertainties of the 1970s produced a reemergence of a defensive, nationalistic sentiment that pictured Japan in a struggle with outside forces aimed at depriving the Japanese of their hard-won postwar gains. Until the early 1990s, international economic tensions were effectively used by the ruling LDP and the bureaucracy to contain and defuse important domestic economic and political issues.

The domestic rhetoric about the hostile international environment in which Japan operated cloaked the fact that by the 1980s the Japanese economy had become one of the world’s largest and most sophisticated. Per capita income had surpassed that of the United States, and total gross national product stood at roughly one-tenth of world output. By the mid-1980s Japan had become the world’s leading net creditor nation and the largest donor of development aid. Prosperity, however, was increasingly linked to trade. Slow domestic growth was offset by booming exports. In the 1970s exports were seen as vital to balance the deficits anticipated from rapidly rising oil prices. But, as the Japanese economy successfully weathered the recessions induced by escalating oil prices in 1972–74 and 1979–81, the volume of exports accelerated. Headed by automobiles, colour television sets, high-quality steel, precision optical equipment, and electronic products, Japan’s merchandise trade balance with western Europe and the United States steadily mounted in its favour.

By contrast, domestic consumption, which had played such an important role in the first phase of Japan’s postwar recovery, began to stagnate. By the early 1990s the Japanese were consuming considerably less than their American, British, or German counterparts. At the same time, consumer prices in Japan were considerably higher than the world average. Studies showed that consumption patterns were influenced by lagging wage increases, congested housing, traditional savings habits, and long working and commuting schedules that provided little time for leisure.

Mounting Japanese trade surpluses increased friction between Japan and its trading partners in Europe and the United States. Japan’s critics charged that the country advocated free trade abroad but maintained a closed market at home, engaged in “adversarial trade” designed to benefit only Japan, and pushed trade to export domestic unemployment during economic hard times, and there were complaints that Japan sold goods abroad at lower than domestic prices—a charge denied by Japanese business and government leaders. The government and bureaucracy responded by making efforts to “open” Japan. In the early 1970s Japan had the world’s second highest tariffs on manufactured goods, but two decades later such tariffs were the lowest among the economically advanced countries. Restrictions on many agricultural products—including, in the early 1990s, rice—were lifted. Japan’s financial markets were deregulated and liberalized, and a study commissioned under Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro in 1986 proposed the restructuring of the Japanese economy to make it rely almost entirely on domestic demand for growth. Plans for such changes were further taken up in the so-called Structural Impediments Initiative (SII) in the late 1980s. By the end of the decade it was generally acknowledged that formal barriers to trade had been largely dismantled, though areas such as construction bidding were still closed, and many cultural barriers remained.

At the same time, what came to be called Japan’s “bubble economy” of the 1980s, which typified an era that combined easy credit with unbridled speculation and eventually drove Japanese equity and real estate markets to astronomical price levels, burst. In 1992–93 this ushered in a deep recession, the severity of which postponed many of the earlier reform plans, further undercut Japanese consumer confidence, and inevitably exacerbated trade tensions. Japan’s merchandise trade surplus with the world, however, continued to spiral up. Those export surpluses finally produced a rapid appreciation of the yen against the dollar in the mid-1990s. Contrary to American expectations, however, this had only marginal effects on the trade balance. At the same time, the stronger Japanese currency allowed Japanese firms and individuals to invest heavily abroad by buying foreign assets (notably real estate) at bargain prices.

The Japanese economy continued to stagnate, teetering between economic recession and anemic growth as the country entered the 21st century. Unemployment, still relatively low by Western standards, rose considerably and in 2000 surpassed 5 percent for the first time in the postwar era. A series of prime ministers in the 1990s and early 21st century called for major economic reforms, particularly deregulation. Notable were the sweeping reforms (dubbed the “Big Bang”) proposed by Hashimoto Ryūtarō (who served as prime minister 1996–98) in administration, finance, social security, the economy, the monetary system, and education. The measures were endorsed by Hashimoto’s successors, but they met resistance in many sectors. Several leaders, including Koizumi Junichiro, who became prime minister in 2001, felt stymied by the inability of the policy changes to produce economic growth. The economy also faced other challenges, particularly from a rapidly aging population and rising income disparities. Although the bond with the United States remained the linchpin of Japan’s external relations, Japan reoriented its economy to integrate it more effectively into that of the Asian economic bloc.

Political developments

The LDP continued its dominance of Japanese politics until 1993. Its success in steering Japan through the difficult years of the OPEC oil crisis and the economic transition that substituted high-technology enterprises for smokestack industries in the 1970s and ’80s, thereby restoring Japan’s international economic confidence, was not lost on the Japanese public. The emerging prosperity that accompanied this transition and the declining influence of the opposition parties, particularly the socialists and communists, served as further popular endorsements of the government-business alliance that the LDP represented. By the late 1980s and early ’90s, however, as economic growth slowed and income disparities heightened public sensitivity to political corruption, this bargain between the people and their government changed.

Yet, there were also earlier signs of a political transition. While LDP rule appeared to be strengthening, the party’s share of the popular vote was declining—from three-fifths in 1969 to barely half in 1983 and to less than a third in the House of Councillors election of 1989. And, while the premiership remained firmly under LDP control, all governments but that of Nakasone Yasuhiro (1982–87) were short-lived. In 1989 the LDP lost control of the House of Councillors to a coalition of opposition parties headed by the socialists, who proposed Doi Takako, the first woman to head a major party in Japan, to be prime minister—a nomination rejected by the lower house.

The era had begun in 1972 with considerable hope for political change, as Tanaka Kakuei, a self-made politician who defied the usual LDP bureaucratic model, sought to address the problems of pollution and urban crowding by calling for a redistribution of industry throughout the Japanese islands. Tanaka’s grand plans soon encountered the reality of the OPEC oil crisis. His era ended in 1974 with little change and with him mired in a major influence-peddling scandal. Indeed, Tanaka came to symbolize the rise of “money politics,” as election campaigns became increasingly expensive and faction leaders—expected to provide campaign funds to their followers—became heavily entangled in questionable financial relationships. At the same time, aggressive businesses needed the cooperation of politicians and bureaucrats to expand within Japan’s highly regulated economic system. As the bubble economy inflated in the 1980s, money flowed freely into political coffers. Although there were early calls for reform, few in the LDP were prepared to make changes. To some degree Tanaka, who was arrested in 1976 and convicted of bribery charges in 1983, underscored this reluctance on the part of the LDP to undertake serious reforms. Despite the guilty verdict, he served no jail time and remained a political force into the late 1980s. By that time, political corruption had become almost endemic, and the LDP was racked by a succession of scandals.

Political turmoil was muted for some months during Emperor Hirohito’s illness in 1988. His death, in January 1989, ended the Shōwa era, the longest recorded reign in Japanese history—some 62 years. He was succeeded by his son, Akihito, who took the reign name Heisei (“Achieving Peace”).

But “peace” was difficult to preserve on both the domestic and foreign fronts. Later in 1989 Prime Minister Takeshita Noboru was forced out of office for involvement in a scandal involving manipulation of the stock market. Takeshita’s successor Uno Sōsuke almost instantly found himself embroiled in a sex scandal, and he resigned after only 68 days in office. Uno was replaced by the “clean” Kaifu Toshiki, who lacked firm support in the party. This became apparent in the lead-up to the Persian Gulf War (1990–91), when Kaifu found himself labeled “reluctant” and “indecisive” in handling Japan’s response to U.S. requests for assistance. Kaifu was forced from office in late 1991 when his efforts to secure legislation for Japanese noncombat participation in UN peacekeeping efforts—which was passed in 1992—and anticorruption measures failed to gain Diet support.

Miyazawa Kiichi, who succeeded Kaifu in 1991, had been a powerful figure within the LDP for several decades. Another damaging political scandal emerged, and Miyazawa, sensing the public outcry, tried to introduce reform legislation in the Diet. This cost him the support of key LDP members, and a no-confidence motion in June 1993, supported by many LDP members, toppled his government. In elections held the following month, the LDP lost its Diet majority to a coalition of opposition parties, ending its 38-year rule.

The July 1993 election ushered in a period of political transition. Several new parties emerged that were essentially splinter groups off the LDP, including the Japan New Party (JNP) and the Japan Renewal Party. These joined several former opposition parties to form a coalition government with Hosokawa Morihiro, leader of the JNP, as prime minister.

Hosokawa initiated political reform, including limitations on campaign contributions and a change in the Japanese electoral system. He achieved some success in limiting contributions and managed to pass a modified elections package that included the creation of 300 single-member constituencies (the remainder of the House of Representatives was to be elected by proportional representation in 11 regional blocs). Opposition within his coalition to tax reform and accusations of his own involvement in the Miyazawa-era scandal forced his resignation in April 1994. Hosokawa’s successor, Hata Tsutomu, lasted a mere two months. In the ensuing power vacuum, socialists and remaining LDP members formed an unlikely coalition, and Murayama Tomiichi became Japan’s first socialist premier since 1948.

During Murayama’s short tenure (1994–96), Japan experienced a devastating earthquake in Kōbe that killed more than 5,000 people and a terrorist attack on the Tokyo subway system by AUM Shinrikyo, a small religious sect, that killed 12 people and injured thousands of others. In 1995 the House of Representatives passed a resolution expressing “deep remorse” for past “acts of aggression,” particularly in Asia, and pledging adherence to the no-war clause in the postwar constitution. Murayama followed the resolution by becoming the first Japanese prime minister to use the word owabi (unambiguously, “apology”). That year, however, Murayama’s Social Democratic Party of Japan (the former Japan Socialist Party) suffered a string of election defeats, and in early 1996 Murayama resigned as prime minister.

Murayama was succeeded by LDP president Hashimoto Ryūtarō, who retained the support of the socialists and the smaller New Harbinger Party (Sakigake). In October the LDP won 239 of 500 seats in the House of Representatives, but with no party willing to join a coalition with the LDP, Hashimoto oversaw a minority administration. By the following year, however, the LDP was able to recruit enough independents to command a majority in the House. Nevertheless, the economic recession reduced the government’s popularity and led in 1998 to legislative losses for the LDP and Hashimoto’s resignation. Obuchi Keizo, who led the largest of the LDP’s factions, was elected LDP president and prime minister. In April 2000 Obuchi suffered a stroke that left him comatose (he died six weeks later), and the LDP secretary-general, Mori Yoshiro, was quickly confirmed as prime minister. In elections that June, the LDP lost its majority and was forced into an awkward alliance with two smaller parties. Mori’s many missteps—for example, he referred to Japan as a “divine country,” a phrase that evoked Japan’s militaristic past—reduced his approval rating to an all-time low for a Japanese prime minister. In April 2001 Mori announced his intention to resign.

Koizumi Jun’ichirō, who urged economic reform and fiscal restraint and criticized the party’s factions, defeated several rivals to win the presidency of the LDP and was confirmed as prime minister. Koizumi enjoyed widespread popularity, but some of his reforms were resisted by the LDP’s conservative factions. In addition, his support for allowing Japan’s military forces to exercise a full-fledged (rather than only defensive) security policy and his visits to the Yasukuni Shrine elicited outrage from some segments of the Japanese population and protests from Japan’s neighbours in Asia, particularly South Korea and China. Despite the controversies, the LDP’s resurgence continued, and in 2003 the party won a clear majority in the House of Representatives, securing Koizumi a second term as prime minister.

Koizumi, after serving his full term, stepped down in September 2006 and was succeeded over the next two years by a string of three prime ministers—all from politically well-connected families. Abe Shinzo, the grandson of Kishi Nobusuke and great nephew of Satō Eisaku (both former prime ministers), served in 2006–07 but resigned amid party scandals and concerns about his health and after the LDP had lost its majority in the upper house of the Diet. His replacement, Fukuda Yasuo—whose father, Fukuda Takeo, was prime minister in 1976–78—also stepped down after a year in office (2007–08), following a nonbinding censure vote by the upper house (the first under the 1947 constitution) and continued frustration over his political agenda. Succeeding Fukuda in September 2008 was Asō Tarō, grandson of Yoshida Shigeru and son-in-law of Suzuki Zenkō, both also former prime ministers. However, Asō could not stem the downward spiral of the LDP’s popularity with voters, who were increasingly dissatisfied with what they saw as the party’s ineffectiveness, mismanagement, and corruption. A particular focus of voter anger was the apparent bureaucratic mishandling of some 50 million pension records that was revealed in 2007. Voters were also unhappy that the LDP had changed prime ministers three times in three years without an electoral mandate. In the August 2009 lower-house elections, scores of LDP candidates were soundly defeated, and the party was swept out of office.

Replacing the LDP was the centrist Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which had been founded in 1996 to challenge the LDP. Soon after its formation, the DPJ emerged as the main opposition party. However, it endured several years of mixed electoral results before its first major success in the 2007 House of Councillors elections, when with its allies it became the dominant force in that chamber. The DPJ’s victory was a landslide in the August 2009 elections, winning 308 seats in the lower house. The party subsequently formed a ruling coalition with the Social Democratic Party of Japan and the People’s New Party, and on September 16 DPJ leader Hatoyama Yukio was elected prime minister. However, Hatoyama’s tenure was ineffectual and brief, cut short after he reneged on a campaign promise to close an unpopular U.S. military base on Okinawa (it was to be moved to a different part of the island instead). He stepped down as prime minister and as head of the party on June 4, 2010, and was succeeded in both offices by Kan Naoto, another high-ranking member of the DPJ.

Kan’s government faced its greatest crisis in early 2011, when , on March 11 , a massive underwater earthquake in the Pacific Ocean east of the northern Honshu city of Sendai triggered a series of devastating tsunami waves that inundated and largely destroyed low-lying areas along the Pacific coast. The quake—at magnitude quake—magnitude 9.0, the strongest ever recorded in Japan—also was highly destructive, spawning fires in a number of cities, leveling thousands of buildings in the region, and causing damage as far away as Chiba prefecture near Tokyo. In addition, the tsunami precipitated a serious nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power station along the coast of Fukushima prefecture that forced the evacuation of residents in a wide area around the plant.

In all, some 20,000 people were either killed by or listed as missing after the earthquake and tsunami, and tens of thousands more were left homeless. The national government quickly organized a massive relief effort, aided by a number of foreign countries. Tens of thousands of people sought refuge in schools and other hastily set-up shelters in the hardest-hit areas, and over the next several months some 50,000 temporary housing units were built in Sendai and other cities in the region to accommodate many of these people. However, Kan’s government was criticized for its handling of the disaster, especially the nuclear emergency in Fukushima. Kan survived a no-confidence vote in June but, with his popularity plummeting, he resigned from the office of as prime minister and as president of the DPJ in late August. He was replaced in both capacities by Noda Yoshihiko, who had served as finance minister in Kan’s cabinet.

Social change

Japan has continued its transformation into a high-technology, urban, industrial society. The migration from countryside to city largely has been completed; some four-fifths of Japan’s people now live in urban areas, and few families live on farms. Urbanization has resulted in further demographic change, including an accelerating decline in the birth rate that by the mid-1980s was less than the level needed to replace the population. Urban congestion, confined housing space, the cost of raising children, a trend toward delaying marriage, a growing reluctance by women to get married, and effective birth-control measures have all contributed to this phenomenon. By 2000 the proportion of Japanese age 65 or older had surpassed those 15 or younger. Thus, Japanese society faces serious demographic challenges, the most urgent being a rapidly aging population and concomitant declining active workforce.

Living standards have risen dramatically since the early 1970s, supporting a strong consumer market. But the excessive crowding and congestion in major cities has been exacerbated by the high cost of real estate, making home ownership difficult for many Japanese families. Hours spent commuting also increased as people moved ever farther from city centres. By the 1990s many Japanese citizens felt confined to an urban environment designed to serve the needs of corporate Japan and not its people and were less willing to support the entrenched government-business alliance that assured majorities for the LDP.

Japanese values also have been changing as generations born and raised in the city mature and replace those brought up in the villages. While Japanese society remains formally hierarchical and social distinctions based on education and family background persist, the degree of conformity and the acceptance of consensus appear to be lessening. As the agriculture-induced submission of the individual to the group fades and as corporations, which previously served as pseudo-villages in the urban environment, lose their paternalistic overtones, greater individuation is apparent. In marketing, for example, it has been found that the former consumer habit of buying the same, familiar brand-name items is not being continued by Japanese who reached adult age from the mid-1980s. Many of those individuals have become disenchanted with the shops and goods their parents favoured and have opted for diversity and competitive pricing. Such phrases as “my car,” “my home,” and “my leisure” further underscore the growing emphasis on the individual and individual choice and on the more assertive attitude of the ordinary Japanese.

Gender relations also have undergone a gradual transition—though not at the speed hoped for by many women. Important role models, such as the socialist leader Doi Takako, Tanaka Makiko (who was chosen in 2001 as Japan’s first woman foreign minister), and Princess Masako (the Harvard-educated diplomat who married Crown Prince Naruhito in 1993), have helped make the place of professional women more acceptable. Women now account for about two-fifths of the workforce, but many occupy temporary or part-time positions, and full-time women employees often find it difficult to advance to management positions. Despite growing dissatisfaction with traditional gender roles, Japanese perceptions of the family and the position of the wife and mother in it have been slow to change. Women, particularly those married to white-collar workers, are still expected to carry much of the responsibility of household management and child rearing, while the males devote themselves to their office culture. Japanese divorce rates, though rising, remain low by Western standards, and the stability of the Japanese family continues to undergird the social system.

Globalization has been another important theme since the early 1970s, as large numbers of Japanese have traveled abroad and an increasing number of foreign students and foreign workers have come to Japan. In the last two decades of the 20th century, the number of foreign residents in Japan roughly doubled to more than 1.3 million. A majority of the foreign residents were Chinese or Korean, but foreign labourers from the Middle East and Southeast Asia, drawn by higher wages, also relocated to Japan to perform many of the less desirable jobs. The absorption of such residents has not always been easy for a society that sees itself as ethnically distinct and homogeneous. Discrimination against minorities, however—including Koreans, the former outcast group now called burakumin, and the Ainu—which has persisted for centuries, appears less acceptable today in a society that is not only more educated but also increasingly subject to international scrutiny and criticism. The internationalization of Japan also has resulted in a reassertion of Japanese nationalism, particularly among the older members of society who see Japan losing its identity amid the influx of foreign culture. And yet, as even a brief visit to Tokyo confirms, American cultural symbols—from fast-food restaurants to blue jeans and motorcycles—are now as much at home in the Harajuku district as on Venice Beach in Los Angeles.

International relations

Japan has continued its close cooperation with the United States, but it also has sought to rebuild relations with its Asian neighbours. Despite the rapid political transformation of the world after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, ties between the United States and Japan have been little altered in their fundamental tenets. Both countries officially remained committed to the Mutual Security Treaty, which keeps Japan under the U.S. nuclear weapons “umbrella” and permits thousands of U.S. troops to be stationed there, particularly on Okinawa; however, many Japanese favour redefining the relationship between the two countries and reducing the number of U.S. troops.

Economic issues have often strained U.S.-Japanese relations, as Japan’s resurgence in the early postwar decades transformed the country from a client to a competitor of the United States. Such a change has not been easy. Trade issues sometimes have been particularly acrimonious, intensified by essential misunderstandings on solutions proposed by each side. While friction on economic issues has removed some of the harmony that once typified the relationship between the two countries, there nevertheless remains substantial goodwill, both countries realizing that, as the dominant economic and military powers of the Asian Pacific region, their bilateral relationship is the most important in East Asia.

The end of the Cold War provided Japan with the opportunity to pursue an independent China policy. Following Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei’s trip to China in 1972, which began the process of normalizing relations between the two countries, Japan vigorously pursued trade opportunities with China, and in 1978 a peace treaty and the first of a series of economic pacts were concluded. Both trade and cultural contacts between Japan and China expanded dramatically, and by the early 1990s China was Japan’s second largest trading partner, surpassed only by the United States. Tensions occasionally have arisen between the two countries over issues such as Chinese objections to the Japanese attitude toward its wartime conduct and its colonial rule of China and to visits by Japanese officials to the Yasukuni Shrine or to Japanese protests of the Chinese repression of demonstrators in 1989. The visit to China by Emperor Akihito in 1992, however, which included a tacit apology for the “severe suffering” that the Japanese had inflicted on the Chinese during the war, demonstrated that Japan was determined not just to build economic ties with China but also to transcend the gap that stemmed from the war and to restore cultural ties. Nevertheless, the political relationship between the two countries remained uneasy into the 21st century.

Although Japan’s formal relationship with Taiwan was discontinued after 1978, Taiwan continued to play an important role for Japan, particularly since the late 1980s, when Japan sought to strengthen its ties with the so-called newly industrialized countries of Asia (South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, as well as Hong Kong when it was a British colony). These were all seen as areas capable of providing high-quality goods for the Japanese market and consequently as sites for direct investment by Japanese firms. Earlier Japanese concerns that these countries would become competitors with Japan for the U.S. market faded as economic interaction between them created a highly dynamic economic region.

Efforts to solidify relations with Southeast Asia advanced in the late 20th century. Lingering resentment over the war and the insensitive attitudes of Japanese businessmen toward local populations in the 1960s produced anti-Japanese riots when Prime Minister Tanaka toured the region in 1974. Anger against Japan and feelings of Japanese exploitation in the region continued into the 1980s, when efforts were made to improve the situation. Southeast Asian nations—particularly Indonesia—became recipients of extensive Japanese development aid. Japan also made efforts to work with Vietnam and Cambodia. Japan’s interests in Vietnam have been largely economic, but in Cambodia Japan played an important role in working out the 1991 UN Security Council “peace plan” and helped with its implementation the following year; through passage of the International Peace Cooperation Law by the Diet, unarmed troops from Japan’s Self-Defense Forces participated in a UN peacekeeping operation, the first time since the World War II that Japanese forces had ventured overseas.

The Japanese government also sought to address lingering animosities that existed toward Japan on the Korean peninsula. Formal statements of apology to Korea for Japan’s colonial rule were issued (most notably by Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi in 1995), visits were made by the leaders of Japan and South Korea to each other’s countries, and bilateral trade agreements were negotiated. However, such positive steps tended to be offset by events that often angered South Korea: occasional statements by Japanese government officials that seemed to defend Japan’s colonial and wartime actions (including the forced prostitution of Korean women during the war), continued periodic prime ministerial visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, and revelations that Japan’s colonial rule was positively depicted in Japanese textbooks. A further issue for South Korea was the status of Koreans living in Japan, many of whom were third- or fourth-generation Japanese-born. Despite these differences, in 2002 Japan and South Korea cohosted the association football (soccer) World Cup finals, the first time the event was held in Asia or staged jointly by two countries.

Relations with Russia have remained decidedly cool. A formal peace treaty was never concluded with the Soviet Union before its dissolution. The major sticking point for the Japanese has been the disposition of the “northern territories,” the four small islands in the southern Kuril chain that the Russians seized following World War II. The Japanese have sought the return of these islands and have been reluctant to grant Russia development aid without an agreement. Negotiations with Russia to resolve the issue continued throughout the 1990s and into the early 21st century.

Japan’s larger role in the world has changed dramatically since the 1970s. As its economy matured, Japan became a leading advanced industrial country. The macroeconomic changes of the 1980s—slower growth, financial deregulation, technological success, tighter labour markets, and currency appreciation—all helped to transform Japan into an important creditor nation, swelling the country’s direct foreign investments. While Japan long has been concerned with the outside world as a source of raw materials and a market for its goods, the Japanese ownership of extensive manufacturing plants, financial institutions, and real estate overseas has required Japan to be more directly involved in world affairs. Accordingly, economic bodies, such as OECD, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization, have received increasing Japanese attention and participation. Japan has also sought to wield more influence within the United Nations, launching a bid in the 1990s for a permanent seat on the Security Council. However, a more “activist” foreign policy role—particularly one hinting at military participation—is not coveted by all Japanese, which is why the dispatch of troops by Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro in 2003 to support the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq was such a watershed in Japan’s postwar history. Representing the first deployment of Japanese military units into a war zone since the end of World War II, the decision elicited opposition by Japanese who believed that it violated the no-war clause of the Japanese constitution, but it also garnered support from those who believed that Japan needed to take a more active role in its defense and to break free from the constraints imposed on the country after 1945.

Emperors and empresses regnant of Japan

The table provides a chronological list of the emperors and empresses regnant of Japan.

Prime ministers of Japan

The table provides a chronological list of the prime ministers of Japan.